Sports: Athletes Pulling Back

Where to put this?  I guess "Arts & Entertainment" is the closest.  Sports are played for our entertainment (and to enrich the athletes).

Simone Biles pulled out of the Olympics today.  Said it was so stressful it wasn't fun anymore.

I say, "Good for her."  Sports stars tend to get laser-focused on their training and performance, and forget to have a life.  Listen to the testimony of Michael Phelps, who basically said, when he retired from swimming, that he'd never done anything else in his life but train.  After retiring he was adrift at sea and went into a deep depression.

Look at Bruce Jenner!

Simone says she was inspired by Naomi Osaka who pulled out of the Wimbleton finals because it was too much pressure.  Good for her too.

Yesterday Kristian Blummenfelt won the triathlon for Norway.  As he was running the final leg, the commentators focused on the fact that he trains eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.  He has no life.  Thank FSM he won the event, or all that would have been for naught.  But now what does he do?

There's a certain romanticism about becoming the world's best at something -- that's what causes all sorts of losers to make up weird Guinness competitions -- but really, it's a huge waste of one's life.  After your event -- assuming you ARE the winner and not one of the 2,344 losers -- who's gonna remember your name?  Who's gonna sponsor a guy who pogo-sticks across Australia, or walks from Florida to New York inside a hamster wheel?  Is it worth giving up your life to be a statistic in some book nobody reads?

Sports should be kept in perspective.  They're entertainment, they're exercise, they're supposed-to-be friendly competition. (I'm talking individual sports here, not the huge corporation team sports that generate billions of dollars for the owners.)

And the Olympics should be about athletes competing as individuals.  Not as countries.

And everyone should get one of these:

Simone Biles just posted a video of herself getting totally out-of-position in a practice gym, and landing flat on her back.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/simone-biles-video-twisties-olympics_n_6103c825e4b0d3b5897ca535

She posts that while this may look "cute" in a practice gym, with lots of soft padding, if it happened to her in a competition, without all the soft mats, it would result in a very low score, a career-ending injury, or paralysis.

One respondent posted "She don't owe nobody no explanations." Still, it's very brave of her to show her screwing up this badly. She must have enormous pride in her accomplishments and this turn-of-events must be devastating for her. Maybe it's some kind of inner-ear infection and will be temporary.

Maybe not.

There was a Russian gymnast (many years ago) who broke her leg in an accident. Her trainers asked the doctors to take the cast off her leg early, so that she could get to training for an up-coming competition. She objected, knowing that her leg wouldn't be ready for the stress of intense training. The handlers insisted. In practice, she attempted some sort of flip, under-rotated (because her injured leg still wasn't up to strength), and landed face first. She broke her neck, and was rendered quadriplegic, at age 20.

What Simone Biles does is beautiful and inspiring, but it is also dangerous. She has every right to protect herself.