The International Olympic Committee has ‘huge respect and support’ for American gymnast Simone Biles, who pulled out of Tuesday’s team event at the #Tokyo2020 Games, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said https://t.co/1eQR2lLeqI pic.twitter.com/DKI8GvC8Rn
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 28, 2021
“Progress”, in a way: Young women can no longer be forced by the IOC or their coaches to break themselves for other peoples’ entertainment.
Notably, she never really competed again. https://t.co/48zeV74DtZ
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) July 27, 2021
karolyi forced kerri strug to vault on a broken ankle and was complicit in the sexual assault of the gymnasts he was charged with training
do NOT “but kerri strug” this
— Jeanna Kadlec (@jeannakadlec) July 27, 2021
I can’t stop thinking about how Simone Biles said that part of why she didn’t retire is bc she worried that if she did, as the only survivor of Larry Nassar’s abuse who is still an active elite gymnast, it would make accountability for USAG less likely
— Jules Amin (@jules_amin) July 26, 2021
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) July 27, 2021
This interview Simone Biles did with the NYT was so sad. On the physical toll the sport takes on her: https://t.co/Vtc97WYGBR pic.twitter.com/tsa614nq5e
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 27, 2021
A new world, and a better one!
Gymnastics-Biles praises ‘brave’ team mates for stepping up https://t.co/uFOiQ9c9wj pic.twitter.com/nSTMmzwuVa
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 28, 2021
Simone Biles has been praised for prioritising ‘mental wellness over all else’ after she pulled out of the Olympic women’s team final.
“You’ve made us so proud.”#bbcolympics
— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) July 28, 2021
Barbara
I wanted to beat Bela and Marta Karolyi with a stick for what they did to Kerri Strug. As I said below, she wasn’t a hero, she was their meal ticket. It later came out how much physical abuse was part and parcel of the Romanian system that spawned the Karolyis, so I am sure they saw Strug’s treatment as nothing out of the ordinary, even “for her own good.” Hardly. They also turned a blind eye to sexual abuse, and that’s the BEST that can be said about them. Who knows what they really knew or suspected and did nothing about.
So yes, Biles did the right thing, to avoid injury, and really, to give her other teammates the best chance to medal on their own terms, which they did. It didn’t conform to the NBC narrative, which is why NBC provided greatly curtailed coverage of the final without all the drama of a made for tv delay in coverage of the final round, and basically only showed the American and Russian team in prime time. Even though there was an incredible contest going on for the bronze between Italy and GB, two teams that have not been known for their gymnastics programs.
The morning, live gymnastics coverage on NBC Sports online is much better, shows more athletes with commenters who are just as knowledgeable.
Steeplejack
Bumped up from downstairs—a good explainer on Simone Biles:
Antonius
I really couldn’t be more pleased at athletes effectively saying,
“I am not your dancing bear. I am a person.”
Old School
Simone Biles has pulled out of Thursday’s event (all-around) but hasn’t yet made a decision about next week’s individual events.
Baud
It’s pretty clear from the clips that she was going to hurt the team if she completed. Apart from her own health, her decision helped them get a silver.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They need to bring back bare knuckle boxing to the Olympics if they just want a blood sport.
Kelly
@Steeplejack: Read that, it sounded familiar. I’ve been white water kayaking since the 1980’s. When flipped 99% of time I can roll back upright on pure muscle memory, even timing my roll to take advantage of the waves while upside down in swirling water. But then every once in a while I get completely disoriented, fail and have to swim out. Worst case I’ve tweaked my shoulder from an awkward attempt.
rp
It’s so stupid that this is an issue. (A) If she’s got the “yips,” she’s potentially risking serious, serious injury by competing. (B) By the same token, she might have cost the US a medal if she competed and made a major mistake. And (C) she’s already won a bunch of golds and is the consensus GOAT. If she had decided to retire and not compete in these olympics no one would have said a word. So it’s weird to hold this against her.
Barbara
@Baud: That seems to be lost on a lot of people. It also annoys me to think that Biles had some kind of duty to win the gold for them when, hello, they are also world class gymnasts who had a realistic chance to win even without Biles albeit things were likely to be much closer.
Some of us gymnastics watchers wondered whether Biles was going to be at her best, because she made “uncharacteristic” mistakes at both the US Women’s championships and the Olympic Team selection meet.
West of the Rockies
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Any sport where the whole point is pummeling your opponent’s skull and rendering him/her unconscious is the high watermark… no longer is one I want to watch.
rikyrah
All those moves Biles does?
If not mentally there, she could wind up a Paraplegic
Or in the morgue.
Go Simone.
Bravo.
Steeplejack
@Kelly:
Same thing from my sketchy career as a (springboard) diver in high school. And water is a lot more forgiving than a gym floor.
Gin & Tonic
My younger daughter competed in gymnastics up until she finished high school, so she understands the extraordinary difficulty of what Biles does better than most. She feels that all televised Olympic events should include a “normal” person – to her meaning in good athletic shape but not trained – so everyone can get some idea of how far removed those athletes are from the rest of us.
Nelle
@Antonius: It reminds me of Nicole Hannah-Jones writing, in her note on rejecting U of NC’s tardy and reluctant tenure offer, that she wasn’t in that game (she had been told that if she rejected tenure, those who blocked her tenure in the first place would win).
Over and over, we get caught in the framing of others. Ralph Warnock challenged the focus on Manchin and Sinema and the filibuster. Why, he wondered, wasn’t the question of why the Republicans were against voting rights being asked?
I hope more and more people are stepping outside the framing that is being offered for their lives. Simone Biles isn’t alive for our entertainment or some USA medal count. The German gymnasts and the Norwegian volleyball players are there to be ogled in skimpy uniforms. Shift the frame.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Having dealt with everything from music to dance with my own children AND seeing clients go through major drama over the demands of competitive gymnastics, cheer and volleyball, my conclusion is that Bela Karolyi was the norm and not the outlier.
Coaching demands for time, perfect performance and abject supplication over team rules and culture are insane, especially considering the expense and effort made. Those assholes go as far as the following:
1. Thanksgiving Weekend practices and competitions, some on the morning of Thanksgiving itself, all “mandatory”;
2. Mandatory practices 12/24 with some competitions 12/26 and beyond;
3. Spring Break competitions and practices, sometimes multiples within the week;
4. Constant mandatory Saturday or Sunday practices or meets;
5. Overbearing summer schedules;
6. Zero consideration or flexibility for travel plans or meeting some visitation needs, with pressure on the child about “their commitment” if they ask for a break;
7. After local practice death in August, HS football instituted a thermometer rule – one coach actually put the thermometer in an ice bucket. That same coach was practicing 6 hours a day in August, and 4 hours when school resumed; kids weren’t getting home until 8:30 or 9:00 PM – by the beginning of September, one honors sophomore felt he was falling behind and asked for a night off to catch up on homework, so he was berated by the coach over his level of commitment to the program (to his credit, the kid quit on the spot).
Etc., etc., etc…..
Immanentize
@Nelle: Well said. And never underestimate many Americans’ endless appetite to criticize Black athletes. Especially Black women athletes.
Compare the treatment of Naomi Osaka and Roger Federer when each bowed out of the French Open.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
Absolutely. When you watch a swimming event, what strikes me is that there might be a 3/4 second difference between gold and 8th place.
Kristine
I’ll never forget the SI story about Mary Lou Retton in which it was stated how Retton gobbled–pretty sure that was the word–ibuprofen because of the joint pain. A teenager, and she already suffered from arthritis. Gymnastics is a brutal sport that needs to undergo some serious reassessment. Kids are broken at an early age and crippled for life.
Nelle
@Immanentize: That should have been “aren’t there to be ogled.” I got interrupted by my son telling me that he got a negative result on his covid test. All adukts are vaccinated, but first the 2 yr old, tgen the 4 yr old, and now he have all had fairly high fevers the last few days. And i had been taking care of the girls. So I’m relieved. And i skipped proofreading.
Ken
That sounds like an SNL skit premise. The real sprinters finish the hundred meters in under 10 seconds, then the SNL cast member comes chuffing across the line at 1 minute 13 seconds.
zhena gogolia
OT, but so good, plus I can’t believe that the Olympics are at the top of the NYT front page instead of Fanone, Dunn, Hodges, and Gonell.
MattF
There appears to be an infrastructure deal. IMO, Trump’s opposition to it could have pushed Rs into agreeing.
guachi
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: And when there isn’t you know there really is a big gap in performance in that race.
J R in WV
We don’t receive an NBC signal, don’t have a cable provider, not available to us at all.
So far I’ve watched on Youtube bits of the pingpong , archery and air rifle competetion. Saw a little bit of mountain bike race, which is crazed, and a bit of the street skateboard gold performance where the 13-y-o won.
That’s all, and I feel replete, like that’s some of the best out there.
Ms Biles should do whatever she feels she needs to do. She has nothing to prove any more. There’s a good reason gymnastics management has been thrown out, they failed to protect their athletes and enabled those who would prey on them. I think gymnastics needs control by the athletes, electing from their own people who set the rules.
Evidently the coaches are all overbearing monsters and perverts who should probably all be in prison mental facilities. They really need to be controlled, not allowed to be in control at all, they don’t care for the athletes at all, and enjoy their ability to control these young people, which is a strong hard signal that they shouldn’t be allowed around youngsters at all.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kristine:
To quote every youth sport coach:
or
Dad always told two stories, not of which bugged the shit out of me. One, he described how when he was playing HS football in the mid-50s, his coach would punish poor execution at practice and at games by ripping your helmet off and beating your head with it in view of everyone. The other was about his own conduct (when he himself was a junior high school track and cross country coach), he was so emphatic about poor performance that he punched a dent in the roof of the school bus when they were headed back to school.
It is a deep cultural problem.
dr. bloor
@Ken: Are you thinking Chris Farley trying for a Chippendale’s job, or Martin Short/Harry Shearer revving up for synchronized swimming?
Steeplejack
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It’s because they can’t get away with that anymore that there are so resentful.
Capri
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: 100% agree
My daughter played “club” volleyball on her way to playing in college. One member of her team told the coach at the beginning of the season that she would not be available on the day of her sister’s wedding. She was the maid-of-honor. When it turned out that this was also the day of a big tourney and she still wouldn’t miss her sister’s wedding the coach went nuts. He ended up pulling the team out of the tourney completely and then spreading the rumor that his girls were too lazy. That was the tip of the iceberg.
Baud
There have been mini-controversies in MLB when players take off during the playoffs to attend the birth of their children.
Gravie
I’m a gymnastics addict, and I started loathing the Karolyis after watching them chew up athletes year after year, while Bela was preening for the cameras and acting like a loveable papa bear. I lost it completely when he dramatically “quit” as a coach after one of his gymnasts started off poorly in an international competition, but while she was still scheduled to compete in events. I read an interview with Mary Lou Retton in which she described the cutthroat atmosphere in the Karolyis’ training facility, how Bela would viciously pit the gymnasts against each other.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Capri:
What a raging jerk.
Thing is, I’ve had surprising little success at convincing judges that over scheduling is a problem and that some of these psychotic coaches need not be coddled by always requiring the nonresidential or half-time parent to give up their time to an activity that the other parent is driving.
I warn them, too – “you know, by the time that this child is 14 or so, they’re going to either be in love with this sport or so burnt out that they’ll never do it again, and that potential love is usually dependent on them legitimately being at the top of their team and league, but even those will frequently want to quit. They’ll also resent the hell out of the parent insisting on continuing it. Do you have something better to do with the 15-20K you spend every year on this?”
UncleEbeneezer
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I sometimes make my students wait until after ball pickup (tennis) to get water. If it’s hot or they just did something really heavy workout-wise, I’ll have them get water first. But it’s a balancing act, because they WILL try to use “water break” to avoid picking up balls. That said, I always tell them if they are seriously hurt or thirsty, they can always do what they need to do and I will never be mad at that. It’s more of a “can you wait until we get these balls up?” kinda thing and usually they say “sure” because it’s literally only another 60-90 seconds and then they can have all the water they need.
louc
The Washington Post has a great explainer on “the twisties,” which are the gymnastic version of the yips, only you can get seriously injured or die.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Yeah, it’s a balance. You gotta push people to focus and be better without going overboard. But in sports and elsewhere, too many people are impressed by aggressiveness.
Redshift
@West of the Rockies:
How about if the only people competing are gymnastics coaches?
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Too much of sports is summarized with those stupid T-shirts that say “Pain is just weakness leaving the body”. I appreciate that learning to deal with ordinary aches and tiredness is an important part of getting stronger; I learned a lot about that side of things in sports myself. But it’s also important to learn to recognize the difference between ordinary aches and signs of actual injury. Too many coaches are unwilling to recognize actual injury, and they push their athletes to keep working when it actually makes things worse instead of better.
Every sports program should have some kind of specialist who doesn’t report to the coach and has a responsibility to act as an advocate for the athletes. They need to be able to step in and tell the coach when the athlete is genuinely injured and work out a plan to get them better. Having the medical people answerable to the coach means they put competition ahead of the athletes’ health.
different-church-lady
Anything that requires subjective judges to score is not a sport. It may still a competition, but it’s not a sport.
Please don’t subscribe to my newsletter, I’m an idiot.
narya
For all of the ways in which my bro can be an ass, I have serious respect for how he coached and supported my nephews in sports. He was never abusive (when he was the coach) to any of the kids, and, with my nephews, he never insisted they keep going past the point where they wanted to go. (One was a D1 athlete; the other was going to be, but then got cut by the coach in college.) One of my favorite pictures is of him with younger nephew after they won the local baseball championship (nephew was a pitcher, though that was not his main/favorite sport). Their relationship is sometimes difficult, but I think that history will always stick.
Suzanne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Sports culture is fucking ridiculous. It’s not entertainment. It’s the fucking Hunger Games.
I am not enjoying the Olympics this year. It feels terrible.
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I will say, there are good coaches out there. I think I’ve told the story before about my high school swimming coach, but I’ll repeat it here. We had a rule that swimmers weren’t allowed to go skiing during the swim season because of the injury risk. This was made clear at the beginning of the season, and the penalty for failing to obey the rule was being suspended for the next meet.
One year, a group of the top swimmers on the team decided they were too important to suspend, and they went skiing right before the conference championship. The coach didn’t think they were too important. He thought being consistent in enforcing the rules was more important than winning, so he suspended them anyway. He told this story at the beginning of the season every year to let everyone know how he did things. He didn’t know as much about swimming as many of my other coaches, but I learned a lot more from him than from them. That kind of experience was really valuable to me, and it’s one of the reasons I think there’s still an important place for sports in the schools.
Gravie
There is an organization dedicated to restoring youth sports to their correct and reasonable role in kids’ lives. aspenprojectplay.org/project-play-2024
Uncle Cosmo
Ayup. And it’s called living vicariously through those you control (your children, your students, your players) or those you fantasize you control (“your” local, regional, national teams – sports [“I buy tickets! I buy swag! I’m part of the audience the advertisers pay to reach!!”] or military [“I pay their salaries with my taxes!!”]).
There’s a yooooge difference between taking pride in whatever way you might have helped someone you taught or coached or supervised to reach their world-class potential, and viewing them as nothing but a means to prop up your middling talents and shaky ego.
How can you tell the difference? When the angry, demanding, hateful part of you starts shoving its way onto the bench and crowding the loving and caring part. Teachers, coaches, bosses, fans all ought to be alert for this – sadly, too many of them get such a thrill out of vicarious living they never bother to notice the love/hate relationship.
zhena gogolia
Thomas Jefferson: “Can we get back to politics?”
Baud
OT: I thought I read that the Trump candidate won in the Texas special election, but she apparently lost (to a Republican).
I guess that’s good news, to the extent the Dems had no shot at that seat.
Steeplejack
All the Simone Biles hoo-ha brought to mind this Twitter classic from 2019:
J R in WV
@different-church-lady:
This is so true.
Judging in ice skating, gymnastics, skate boarding, etc, etc is so fake. Beauty contests, where the red-head always wins, because judge has a thing for red-heads… not a sport at all.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
OTOH, there’s usually a big discussion when a Jewish player takes time off from the playoffs for the High Holy Days, and the general opinion seems to favor them taking the time off. I know this came up with Hank Greenberg, and his rabbi said it was OK to play on Rosh Hashanah but not on Yom Kippur. I think Sandy Koufax’s rabbi said the same thing, and it’s now accepted wisdom.
Baud
Deleted
different-church-lady
Years ago Joy Williams wrote an essay called “Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp.”
In this analogy, our darling little teenage US Olympic team competitors are the whales (or Pandas, for that matter) and meat plant workers who lose digits and work in super-spreader conditions are the shrimp.
When a gymnastics star risks her neck, at least she’s doing it for a shot at fame and fortune. But the most accomplished meat packer in the entire world is still just eekeing out a living.
My point is not to dump on Biles. My point is that our fascination with her might be a huge part of the problem.
Sometimes we just focus on the wrong shit. Because we’re human, and even bright humans can be really dumb about big things.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
I’ve noticed Christians don’t complain about the NFL playing on Christmas.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Very few of us are so personally invested in meatpackers that we spend time watching them on TV.
Geminid
I think most people understand Simon Biles’ challenges and accept her decisions. But when I look at some of the negative responses to her and to Naomi Osaka before her, it’s obvious that Black atheletes bring out some people’s inner slave driver.
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
I will say that I think the scoring in diving is reasonably fair. I was on the swim team and watched a lot of diving, and I know how to score it. I can watch the Olympic diving and tell what the scores will be because the judges are looking at objective measures of success.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic:
At first I was thinking, we should have regular events where you need to attempt to do something even half as well as an athlete. And then I remembered I’ve reached the age where just watching an athlete do something makes my body ache.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I think we just invented a reality-TV competition show.
Stop us before we invent again.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@West of the Rockies: And the difference between that and what’s going on in Gymnastics is…? This sounds comes across as a Hunger Games style contest over who can’t take the pain first.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
There was a relatively recent case here regarding a high school athlete’s late summer practice heat death. It was bad – dad was in the stands and failed to intervene even though the testimony was awful. Just brutal as practice goes.
different-church-lady
@Baud: But seriously, the question is why are we so personally invested? Athletic competition is not the only human drama.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: One of my friends at law school had been a D-1 tennis player. We used to play on occasion. She was a lefty so she played me right handed. I could take a few points off her. Unless she didn’t want to let me.
Gravenstone
@Geminid: I think part of the subtext may be that those people objecting/complaining see the athlete’s role in society solely as entertainment. Thus, when they fail to fulfill that entertaining role, they no longer have any intrinsic value and deserve only scorn and abuse. Now, those people may hold similar views about a lot of athletes, but I’m willing to bet it is only given voice for the Black ones.
trollhattan
@dr. bloor:
Both are epic, and not to overlook pro athlete John Belushi and his training diet of powdered-sugar donuts.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: I used to play hoops with four time Olympic Gold Medalist Teresa Edwards. If you didn’t keep your head on a swivel she would tear your face off with a pass! What an incredible player and great person
eta “She also holds the unique distinction of being the youngest gold medalist in women’s basketball (age 20 in 1984) and the oldest gold medalist in women’s basketball (age 36 in 2000).[2]”
Baud
@different-church-lady:
We’re invested in a lot of different human dramas. Art, music, movies, politics, etc. Sports is purely about competition, but we don’t treat the celebrities in these other dramas like meatpackers.
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
They used to not let football players drink water during practice. Demented, but supposedly it “made them tough.” Uhhhh.
Zelma
I was a bad parent. My son was a pretty good soccer and baseball player. At age nine, the coach suggested he was good enough for travel soccer and club soccer. This would have meant hours and hours of practice and devoting weekends to traveling all over the place. I said no. His baseball coach suggested he try out for travel baseball. This would have meant forgoing our month at the shore. I said no. I said no to any sport that interfered with church and Sunday school. Guess what? His life was not ruined.
The American mania for kids’ sports is insane.
frosty
@Steeplejack: I saw this when you posted it last night. A real eye-opener! Losing muscle memory and having to think through her moves would be SO dangerous. She is due all the respect possible.
narya
I knew someone who was a very good athlete in high school and college–baseball was his sport. He told me he once went up against a pitcher who eventually had a cup of coffee in the majors, and my friend never even saw any of the pitches, much less got a bat on them. Folks really don’t seem to understand how much BETTER even the lowest-level pros are than the rest of us.
different-church-lady
@Baud: The follow up thought is that we care about and compensate people who entertain us so much more than the people who give us the basics of survival. Truly an insane amount more.
raven
@trollhattan: And they made us eat salt pills in Vietnam!
Baud
@different-church-lady:
At some level, everyone is responsible for everyone else’s survival. It’s not really an us vs. them situation. The meatpackers don’t care that much about you either.
Ruckus
I road raced motorcycles in my 20s, after I got out of the navy. It’s exciting, exacting and extremely dangerous. And there is a certain amount of enjoyment in that. I was decent at the club level but that extreme level of danger is not for everyone, no matter the sport.
Simone Biles has taken that extreme level of danger in her sport and made it look almost easy, which it is most assuredly not. She is one of the very best at her sport, ever. I worked in world level pro sports for a number of years, met a lot of world class competitors and she is one of the classiest sports figures at that level of any sport. And the crap she had to endure is 100000% wrong. Floggings are not enough.
raven
@narya: “My Losing Season” by Pat Conroy has interesting reflections on this. He was an all-state point guard in South Carolina and a starter on the Citadel basketball team and he writes about guys that he had NO chance of scoring on or defending. I’ve played with guys who played big 10 basketball and in the NBA (Eddie Johnson) and it’s unbelievable what they can do.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
I used to be a pretty good club-level racquetball and squash player. Sometime in the ’80s I played racquetball with Richard Dent, a Chicago Bears defensive end, who was training at my club in the off-season. I barely beat him, and that was strictly because he didn’t know shit about racquetball, didn’t give a shit about racquetball and was basically just cooling off after (I’m sure) a strenuous workout.
The thing that was seared into my brain was how quick he was. He would just materialize where the ball was going and have enough time to execute a pretty good shot. He was (checking the Google) 6'5", probably 250-260 pounds, and I felt like I was trapped in a pit with a panther. Lucky to get out alive. I remember thinking, Yeah, there are 21 other guys on a football field just like him—and some number of whom make him look like a big, lumbering lineman. [Shudder]
ETA: I’m also reminded of what a AAA baseball coach told me once about guys who’d like to take an at-bat against an MLB pitcher: “Hit the ball?! They won’t see the ball!”
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: FWIW some people care deeply about the Tonys and the Grammys. I have no real interest in either.
Baud
@raven:
They should have just given you salt water from the ocean.
rp
@narya: I had this experience in college. I occasionally played pickup basketball in the gym, but was usually one of the worst people on the floor. Guys on our varsity team would occasionally play, and they were an order of magnitude better than even the best pick up players. And the guys on the varsity team were completely outclassed by two players at one of our rivals who eventually had a cup of coffee in the NBA but weren’t nearly good enough to stick. Made me realize that I’m basically four orders of magnitude removed from the average NBA player.
Barbara
@Steeplejack: Lateral quickness is what separates the great from the not so great NFL players, but especially running backs and those defending against them. The Baltimore Ravens player who accompanied his sister to an Irish dancing class realized how helpful that kind of dance training might be for honing quick feet and became seriously accomplished at it. And it’s no joke that the NFL players are usually really good as contestants on Dancing with the Stars. They know how to move.
Steeplejack
@narya:
This checks out.
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
I don’t know, the regionals look pretty loaded this year: the Chicago guys are gonna have their hands full with those Tyson cats from Arkansas.
aliasofwestgate
@Barbara: That body control is also what makes a lot of good former athletes do most of their own stunt work if they’re actors. Even former ballerinas have that level of control and it’s unreal but it makes a lot of sense. It amazes me, but no way in the world would i have been able to keep up even as a teen or in my 20s.
I’m extremely glad to see Biles be able to stop and make sure she doesn’t injure herself beyond repair and make sure her head’s on straight too. It’s best for her, and even more so best for the team.
West of the Rockies
@raven:
Absolutely. I played once against a guy from University of New Orleans (which is Div 1, but not UNC). Blew past me. By the time I reacted, he was behind me. Talk about humbling but impressive.
Steeplejack
@West of the Rockies:
Never bet against the Packers!
Chief Oshkosh
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yep. Over the decades I’ve found myself saying over and over to anyone who’ll listen: Every high school football head coach wants to be coaching college. Every college football head coach wants to be coaching in the pros. The players are just expendable slaves to be used to reach those goals. Do you want to live your dream, or just be an abused bit actor in someone else achieving their’s?
Football was the worst for this. I saw it a lot less in soccer, basketball, track/cross-country, golf, tennis, etc. Oddly, and this just be my limited experience, second-worst after football was swimming.
Old School
I watched this video earlier this year about non-pro athletes playing a retired NBA player.
Leto
@raven: Guy I went to school with, Kevin Long, was an all-state snapper for SC. Eventually went on to play for Florida State, winning two national championships with them, then on to the Tennessee Titans where the Rams beat them in their first Super Bowl. Even in high school, dude was about 2-3x the size of anyone else there. He just got bigger/stronger in college, then the NFL. We’ve had a few NBA players, and other NFL players, come out of our school and they’re always just… more. Physically on a different level than anyone around them.
Kent
I played HS football in the late 70s and early 80s. My head coach was a Korean War-era retired marine who was exactly as you describe. We used to take bets about whether the bulging veins in his forehead would cause him to stroke out. From him I learned that Jesus has a middle initial “H” which to this day I still don’t know what it stands for. He would actually break chairs in the locker room at half time when things were going poorly
I went to school with Danny Ainge who was a couple years ahead of me. Talk about being light-years ahead of everyone else in natural talent. I think he was a 3-sport all-American. He could have been an NFL QB had he gone that direction. It was probably his best sport but he made the right decision to stick with basketball and baseball after HS.
Ken
I’ve heard the punchline “haploid”.
Steeplejack
@Old School:
I saw that somewhere a while back. It’s hilarious.
Chief Oshkosh
@trollhattan: Yep. That’s how it was for me. After each practice, players were expected to jog back to the locker room to get water. No water at practice fields. The only water was in the locker room. Which was a quarter mile away, across other practice fields and large parking lots. Two-a-days, in August. I still get a faint pleasant feeling every time I remember that that head coach died a while ago. One less asshole in the world.
Years later, I pondered how stupid and pointless it all was. All of it.
raven
@Leto: I just missed seeing him in the National Championship against the Hokies in 2000!
raven
@Chief Oshkosh: And no swimming during two-a-days!
Leto
Biden speaking now in Macungie, PA. Delivering remarks on manufacturing.
prostratedragon
@narya: Brother attended a college used s training camp by the local NBA team, so got to watch public practice sessions. He said that from spots 1 to 12 plus those who’ll get cut, hardly anyone ever misses in the shootarounds.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kent:
My high school had crazy talent – Schembechler liked recruiting it for the basic blue collar Catholic working culture. I was never good enough to suit up for the squad (Bubba Paris was a product, had a nice NFL career – dude was a giant). I was a lowly track and field kid, instead.
raven
@Kent: My old man was a hs football coach in Illinois and California. Two things he said stand out for me.
raven
@prostratedragon: My buddy was a trainer for the Beijing Ducks CBA team. They did ok financially when they were playing but when it was over, it was over! He said the preseason where they made the cuts was savage.
Suzanne
@Kent:
Hussein.
zhena gogolia
I guess I have to go elsewhere for politics today.
Kent
@raven: Times have really changed. When we lived in Texas I taught at a big 6-A school that was one of the bigger football factories in Texas. We probably put out 6-8 D1 football players every year, and at any point in time the starting lineup on both sides of the ball was probably majority future D1 college players.
I wasn’t a coach but I taught with some and what surprised me compared to growing up and playing HS ball in the 1980s was how little contact there was during practice, and how scientific and professional it all was. Very much skill and fitness oriented and very little of the abuse we went through in previous generations. Coaches used to make us batter each other senseless in practice. Barely any of that happens these days, at least at the top levels. And the abusive bullshit like limiting water and practicing during peak Texas heat simply doesn’t happen anymore.
The teams that win these days at the top levels of the HS game do so with speed and athleticism not violence. Watching a top HS spread no-huddle office take apart a lesser team is something to behold.
germy
Watch the behavior of this “coach” :
MomSense
I admire Simone and I’m so proud of her for taking care of her well-being under unimaginable pressure and scrutiny.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
The thread downstairs is still going strong.
JoyceH
@Leto:
Have you noticed we’ve replaced Sir Stories with Listen Joey Stories? Since the Sir Stories were always about some burly working man telling Trump, with tears in his eyes, how utterly awesome Trump is, and the Listen Joey Stories are Biden’s dad uttering words of wisdom, I’ll take that swap,
On the subject of sports, does it bother anyone else that they’re running ads on television for KT tape? I’ve got nothing against KT tape – when my knees were bad, my physical therapist would apply it for me and taught me how to apply it myself. But these ads are aimed at weekend athletes, to enable them to ‘play through the pain’, and honestly – WHY?
prostratedragon
@raven: Oooo, I can barely imagine! All that skill and what must feel like potentially no place to go.
jl
@Steeplejack: Thanks. I was going to link to that very important piece. No one at the pressers, not team mates or coaches or IOC mentioned it in the clips I saw, maybe they knew they shouldn’t. But, as I noted yesterday, from clips I saw of Biles doing her beam and vault routine, something was going very wrong, and the TV expert commenters noted it in real time. I’ve never heard the expert commenters gasp before with surprised concern and explain that a gymnast was in trouble as a gymnast was doing the routine .
Something happened, pressure, too much intense effort and training for too long, public expectations that Biles would deliver gold, platinum, and diamond medals for everything the US team would do, to affect her performance in subtle but potentially dangerous ways.
If I were spinning 15 or more feet above the ground, and losing my ability to know where I was or what to do next, I would take a break before I broke something. But, hey, maybe that is just me. Giving Biles any grief for this is just totally out of line
Edit: and as other commenters have noted, I do wonder if the BS that went on in the past has affected Biles’ ability to perform under pressure. I’ve looked at old clips of the US team, and my stomach churned as I watched those miserable goons hugging and escorting the gymnasts around before and after routines. If just watching it made my stomach churn, I can’t imagine what the gymnast were going through emotionally.
JoyceH
@jl:
Someone described what the gymnast do as ‘diving into an empty pool’ – I sure wouldn’t try it!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kent:
“Goddammit, get out there and HIT SOMEBODY!! I’m not doing it for you, your grandma could do it better” (coach bellow)
Cmorenc
@Gravenstone:
at the pro level with paying spectators or tv networks, that is exactly what eg nfl and nba players are- entertainers. Not that they arent still humans with other human needs and emotions, but the attention (and money) paid to them would be vastly smaller
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
This makes sense because of the way mass media works. We can afford to pay top level pro athletes very well because we only need a few thousand of them to provide all the high-level sports the country wants. We spend a lot more money in total paying farm workers than athletes, but because we need millions of farm workers to provide all our food, the individual farm workers get paid far less.
It’s still not fair how little we pay our farm workers- nobody should get the starvation wages they’re paid- but we could take divert every penny that’s paid to pro athletes to increasing the pay of farm workers, and it wouldn’t make a really big difference. If we want farm workers to be paid more, we need to accept paying more for food.
germy
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
Lynn Swann was famous for practicing ballet. I think he got some razzing for it, but you couldn’t argue with the results.
germy
Ella in New Mexico
I was a gymnast as a youngster (11-15) and competed with my middle and high schools teams. It was the tail- end of the Olga Korbut era, beginning of Nadia Comaneci’s young career and I lived and breathed all things gymnastics. All I wanted was to achieve like they did.
I was pretty darn good and had a very intense work ethic when it came to training and competing. At some point I was recruited to start year round, elite-level gymnastics training at a city 150miles away from my home where they’d educate me in-between intense training sessions. I was thrilled! Here was my chance to rise to the top and shine!!!
Thankfully my parents were fricking broke and refused to let some kind of other financial arrangements happen, and were TOTALLY not for shipping their kid off to be raised by strangers so they shut that whole thing down. Of course I was devastated, angry, so hurt that they were taking away an “opportunity for me to achieve, maybe go to the Olympics!”
No, in all seriousness I would never have made the Olympics. I’d have been lucky to participate at a competitive level for a while until I grew to be 5’6″ and 145lb young woman with actual boobs— which pretty much killed my gymnastics career.
Thank. Fucking. God. I know now I totally dodged a bullet. Gymnastics only got meaner, and greedier and Heaven knows how any of these young women like Simone made it to the top without being even MORE emotionally scathed then they are.
Bless her heart for putting herself first. It’s gonna be a tough road for awhile, but she’ll be better for it.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
I’m not saying you are wrong here but the plain fact is that what she does and how good she is at it, is very rare in the entire world. We have a fascination with her and what she does because she is a very rare and very real human being. Rare because she is so very, very good. And very real because as we see she is human, and a very good human at that.
Steve in the ATL
@Kent:
Harold, as in “Harold be thy name”
misterpuff
I’m wondering if Ms. Biles has some form of vertigo. She had missteps in the Qualifiers and in the Olympic early rounds and on the evening of the finals.
She may have the “twisties” or “yips”, but there may also be a somatic cause.
I have been enjoying this thread because fandom makes us all critics or judges but as many of you had pointed out the elite class athletes usually know their bodies and when they can’t perform, no matter what the coaches, officials or fans think.
Usually, this discussion stays on the sports page and relates to when an athlete hangs them up. Its got to be tough for a GOAT to do so, (see Jordan or Ali or current conversations speculating how long Brady can last).
trollhattan
@germy:
OMFG. “How do you sink vee konkured de Europe. By beink tuffist! Now be zee tuffist!”
Ruckus
@misterpuff:
I was wondering the same thing. Two years ago I got my first ambulance ride. I will skip the details but the gist is, my balance is now crap, vertigo sucks and with my eyes closed I have only seconds before I can no longer stand up. My balance is 99% visual. That inner ear stuff has left the building. If she is anything or anywhere near like me, there is no way she could do anything like she is known for. I can’t walk a straight line for 10 feet because of this.
Barbara
@misterpuff: Vertigo can be transitory and sudden. I had episodic vertigo when I was in college, with the cause never determined. It could be jet lag, an ear or other kind of infection, food poisoning, dehydration, or even scarier things. But it is a real thing, and even a small disturbance would be incompatible with high-flying gymnastics. And it’s true, as I said above, Biles made a lot of small mistakes in earlier competitions this year, like stepping out of bounds or not landing vaults correctly. She was in tears after one particularly difficult beam routine. I really hope it’s something minor, and I don’t really care whether she competes in the individual finals.
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
Size of splash is an objective measure, also too. I admit to not knowing that much about diving, form and entry I guess would be most important…
apocalipstick
@different-church-lady: I agree with you. A sport requires physical effort and immediate knowledge of victory, not the decision of a judge.
J R in WV
@raven:
Hell, the USN fed me salt tablets in Pascagoula MS while my ship was in the Ingalls yard there for overhaul, back in ’72. Every hour the 3rd class ass would come around and make you drink a quart of Navy Coolaid and take a salt pill. I did OK, it was heavy labor on the gulf coast.
apocalipstick
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s impossible from television to get any real sense of the difference between even an upper-echelon (not even truly top-tier) athlete and an average or evan “good” athlete. I played pickup basketball years (decades) ago against Wayman Tisdale, who was a journeyman NBA big man for some years.
How did I do? Well, he was a really nice guy.
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
Size of splash is absolutely a scoring criterion. The things they look at are:
So they’re really being judged on technical criteria rather than artistic ones, which makes the judging fairly objective.
J R in WV
Also, Simone Biles is a hero for knowing when to stop, before she really injured herself. That’s at least as brave as going ahead with those dangerous events. So accomplished, so competent at her skill, if it isn’t working, you have to stop right there or lose the rest of your life.
I hope those folks make enough to be comfortable going to college for a profession…
Patricia Kayden
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Please don’t give them any bright ideas.
narya
@apocalipstick: I learned a bit more about this with my older nephew. He was D1, and his last year competing made it to the regionals for his event, but he BARELY made it, and he really had no chance to come anywhere close to winning. He, too, wrecked a lot of his body, despite it being non-contact. That said, he is happy he did it, and the experience serves him well. When he was first applying to colleges, or thinking about it, I sat him down and said, you’re not going to making a living at this sport. Therefore, what you need to do is leverage the skills you have to get into the best ACADEMIC program you can. He’s also quite smart, so they were happy to have someone to raise the GPA of the team, too. And I still think I’m the only person to give him that blunt advice.
Patricia Kayden
Barbara
@Roger Moore: They have tried to make the judging in gymnastics much more objective than it used to be in a variety of ways, first by agreeing beforehand what the maximum score of a routine would be if perfectly performed — so you can’t give an impromptu “perfect” score if the difficulty doesn’t permit. Then, they have mandatory deductions for specific events — and what’s more, the judges in gymnastics now confer so that they agree on how to view various elements, especially bobbles and falls. For instance, one of the Russian gymnasts fell off the beam (mandatory deduction of .5), but the question was whether she had completed the element before the fall, and should thus get credit for having done the element, which would affect her maximum score for performing all the elements. They have to agree so that one judge doesn’t score it differently from another.
Ice skating has come up with similar modifications. Even though some athletes hate the paint by numbers approach, it is generally conceded that it is much fairer to athletes to do it this way.
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
One thing I like about diving is the way they’ve separated the difficulty element from the execution. Rather than adding points for difficulty and then subtracting them for flawed execution, they are scored completely separately. Each dive is given a difficulty score, and that’s multiplied by the judges’ score to give the final value. In practice, it seems like it makes it easier for the judges to give low scores; it’s not unheard of for divers in the Olympics to get 5 or 6 out of 10 on a dive. In turn, that discourages divers from pushing beyond their limits, since a 10 on a relatively easy dive is worth more than a 5 on a nearly impossible one.
Chetan Murthy
SERIOUS TRIGGER WARNING: In this video, you’ll see a gymnast [really, a child — they focus on her face during the setup] attempt to execute a routine on the balance beam, and miss, landing literally on her head. She wasn’t even *examined* right after, and went on to compete in a floor routine.
twitter.com/Dmoceanu/status/1420396388614037509
I shouted out in fear at the critical moment, and I’m not that sort. It’s pretty shocking, and the idea that somehow Ms. Biles doesn’t know whether she’s safe to compete is ridiculous.
P.S. Seriously, don’t watch that video if you can get alarmed by children in great danger; just reading the text is enough to get the informational message.
currawong
“Progress”, in a way: Young women can no longer be forced by the IOC or their coaches to break themselves for other peoples’ entertainment.”
Hmmm. Perhaps you haven’t seen IOC member John Coates manspaining to the Queensland Premier that she WILL attend the opening ceremony.
I know it’s not to an athlete but the arrogance is there for all to see.
billcinsd
@apocalipstick: Waymon Tisdale averaged 15 points a game in a 13 year NBA career. He was a considerably better than a journeyman. He also only played for 3 teams. I played pickup with Steve Hayes. He was a journeyman — 6 teams in 6 NBA years, played 212 total NBA games. He was terrible. He was 7′ and a little over 200 pounds and was early 30s just after he stopped playing in the NBA when I played against him, and he couldn’t hit a layup and was too skinny to get decent position in the post.
I played against a bunch of D1 starters and guys that played CBA and in Europe. I could hang with most of them in pickup ball because they weren’t trying that hard and I was a pretty good player. I only really struggled with big guys that knew how to use their body in the post, and really fast guys that attacked the rim directly.
Ted
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Some years ago U.S. Swimming proposed that timing be taken to 1/1000 of a second. Someone quite wisely pointed out that in 1/1000 of a second a swimmer travels about 2 millimeters and they don’t make pools that accurately.