At the 2003 World Figure Skating Championships, Tim Goebel stood by the ice just before his long program. At the time, people called him the Quad King. In figure skating, competitors gather speed along the ice, leap into the air, spin quickly, and land on a thin blade of steel so sharp it can slice open a skull. Done well, a jump is sublime: a crisp, impossible suspension aloft. Goebel was among the first men to complete four spins before landing, and the first to do so from three different takeoff positions. He had won bronze at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics...The next season, however, his jumps became dicey. A one-hundred-fifty-pound man lands a quad with a force perhaps ten times his body weight, and to make them precise, reliable, and clean, Goebel had been doing eighty a day for several years. His hips had begun to fray...
Eighty quad jumps per day. For decades I viewed the Olympics as the epitome of sport, but in recent years I've seen news and reports suggesting it has become a perversion of sport.
That's true about it being a perversion of sport. What it does to children is a whole bucket of crimes.
ReplyDeleteIf your profession is to push your body to its limits, injuries are going to happen. This is inevitable.
ReplyDeleteWhat matters is how an athlete deals with those injuries. These definitively needs to be a serious discussion about how athletes deal with those injuries. It is not a good reality that athletes are faced with major economic pressures, as well as mental pressure all the way to straight abuse from their coaching team when they get injured. This needs to change.
It is difficult to see how a single athlete can take a well-informed decision when all the pressure points to keep performing. Sports associations are failing their athletes on this subject - for economic profits.
This is, as the previous poster mentioned, especially true for children. We should ban children from professional sports. Adults have been shown to not be able to protect children from themselves (for both thems).
And aside from the officials, we are all guilty of that by fetishing over what children can do every single Olympic Games again. Step back a bit and then realize how disgusting it is that we idolize teenagers that much for mere fleeting entertainment.
"We should ban children from professional sports. Adults have been shown to not be able to protect children from themselves (for both thems)."
ReplyDeleteAgreed. We have laws protecting children regarding work, participation in scholastic sports, etc. These policies should be extended to other sports organizations and activities involving children.
OTH, some in our country are OK with allowing parents to make life altering decisions regarding their children's gender, or even allowing children to make those decisions. Those who debate the propriety of this are labeled as haters, or worse.
some in our country are OK with allowing parents to make life altering decisions regarding their children's gender, or even allowing children to make those decisions
DeleteNot sure these are related issues. No kid is changing his gender because of a sponsor contract or parental pressure.