The 2020 Olympics… in 2021

[Julius Seeker]

This isn’t the post I want to set the tone of the thread with, but… the stuff hitting headlines is not so much about the actual sports performances… maybe that’s because in Canada we aren’t really winning much

• Back during the Cold War, some people from the more brutal Eastern regimes, such as Ceausescu’s Romania, would seek asylum in Western countries. Belarusian Sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya is seeking asylum. The situation began after she refused to be put on the 4x400 relay team with little notice, her coaches then pulled her off her events and tried to force her to return to Belarus. She’s being offered Asylum in several countries at the moment.

• Favourite Simone Biles had a mental break mid-air after vaulting herself like a torpedo. She lost track of where she was and pulled out of most of her events. The “twisties” it’s called in her profession, sounds cute, but they’re a gymnast’s worst nightmare - an incorrect landing can result in broken bones, a broken neck, and even death.

• Canada may not be winning much, but we DO have a medal in swimming… everyone seems to have a medal in swimming. Something like half of the US medal counts are for swimming. They hand those things out like candy. There are some athletes winning 3, 4, even 5 medals in this one event for swimming. This is why the idea of medal counts per country is a bit ridiculous because some medals aren’t as specialized as others. For example, 100m sprint, the skill is transferable to two different events - 200m and the 4x100 relay, and that’s it. Relay depends on 3 other runners, so it’s not a give me. And even then, there is a tremendous difference in 200m and 100m since 100m focuses on pure explosive energy and 200m is about hitting that top speed and enduring. So someone might be able to explode to a faster speed, but not endure it, which splits the skill sets required… unless you’re someone like Usain Bolt.

[Don]

For Simone Biles I don't get why they act like this is a big deal. Apparently all the lesser individuals didn't withdraw for similar things and you didn't have gymnast coming out of a competition in a body bag. I mean if you look at the core all it says is that someone who is allegedly GOAT is mentally weak, which isn't a sin, but apparently you can't say that she's mentally weak despite the fact that everyone else goes through the same thing she did. In fact since Simone Biles is clearly more physically capable than other individuals, it's less of a mental strain because if you can jump higher it's less risky to do some number of turns or whatever in mid air compared to someone who can't jump as high because you got more time. Now she does stuff that no one else does that are exceptionally difficult but if that's the sole concern then she can just dial down her difficulty and continue competing. It'd be no different than if she turned out to have some physical injury that is crippling but doesn't completely prevent her from competing so you do easier stuff instead.

I think it's pretty hilarious that US women softball and soccer both lost, and while I don't follow the sports too much it seems like they both ran with a lot of old people because they wanted to let them get a gold medal but ended up losing. When Michael Phelps was on his final Olympics they gave him some easy relay race that the US was certain to get gold. Just because you might have been a legend 10 years ago doesn't mean people are obligated to let you win.

[Julius Seeker]

Wondering why the twisties are serious? Here’s an article explaining the dangers with quotes from gymnasts who were paralyzed while performing with them:
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.si.com/ ... -paralyzed

(Article also in spoilers)

Spoiler: show

TOKYO — When Simone Biles withdrew last week from the women’s gymnastics team competition at the Olympics, most of the world reacted with shock. Jacoby Miles felt only relief.

She recognized the look in Biles’s eyes as she bailed on her vault, stopping earlier than she meant to and only barely landing safely. Biles would later say she had suffered from the twisties, a form of gymnastics yips that leaves its sufferers feeling lost in the air.

Miles, 23, recognized that look because she had felt it, too. She, too, had experienced the twisties. She, too, had bailed on a skill, stopping earlier than she meant to. But she didn’t land safely. Miles fell on her neck. She is paralyzed from the chest down.

“She was brave enough and strong enough, even though it was the Olympic stage, to say, No, for my own safety, physical and mental health, I'm going to step out and make this decision,” Miles says. “I thought [it] was just really, really smart on her part.”

Robert Deutsch/USA Today Network
The conversation around Biles’s decision has mostly centered on mental health. But she saved herself from enormous physical risk. A gymnast who loses concentration, spatial awareness or confidence might never walk again.

Miles was a high-level 15-year-old gymnast when she began noticing that she sometimes struggled to sense where she was on double backflips. You’ll be fine, she told herself. This is just a phase. She had successfully performed a double backflip dismount from the uneven bars “probably hundreds of times before,” she says, so on Nov. 16, 2012, she practiced it again. As her hands released the bar, though, she realized she had no idea where she was.

“That same exact thing that happened to Simone happened to me,” she says. “I got lost in the air.”
Miles could not complete the flip. She landed on her neck and dislocated her C4 vertebrae, instantly rendering her a quadriplegic. She has since regained some movement in her arms, and she graduated last year from Seattle Pacific, but she expects to be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

In retrospect, she regrets trying a skill that was giving her so much trouble. She did not have the vocabulary for what was happening to her. It took her years even to use the word twisties. She had suffered from versions of that confusion before. Most gymnasts have. In those cases, she had started over and relearned the elements. But she did not understand how dangerous the disorientation could be.

The sport can be perilous even for those who feel confident. In 1989, Adriana Duffy was competing for Puerto Rico at the world championships when she slipped while practicing her vault. She is mostly paralyzed from the chest down. So is Sang Lan, who fell on a vault during warm-ups while competing for China at the ’98 Goodwill Games. Soviet gymnast Elena Mukhina died from complications of the quadriplegia she suffered when she fell on her floor exercise while practicing two weeks before the ’80 Olympics. So did Julissa Gomez, of the U.S., after she slipped on a vault at the World Sports Fair in ’88. And Melanie Coleman, a gymnast at Southern Connecticut State, was killed when she fell off the uneven bars in 2019.

Those accidents were the result of physical errors. But they speak to the tiny gap between a successful routine and a devastating injury.

“I remember having a fear of twisting the wrong direction, which I didn’t ever actually do,” says Duffy, who now goes by Duffy-Hörling and is an attorney and a professor at Santa Clara’s law school. “But I remember feeling that quite a lot, that I would just go into the air and go the wrong way and then who knows what would happen.”

Duffy-Hörling’s fall was a freak accident. She was too far back on the vault, which at the time was a vaulting horse rather than today’s safer vaulting table, and her hand slipped off. She could not get enough height to complete her skill, and in the moment she worried that bailing out might put her in more danger. She landed on her neck.

“Getting lost in the air is very scary,” Duffy-Hörling says, “Because if you don't know where you are and you don't know where the floor is, really bad things could follow from that.”

Biles, who plans to compete in the balance beam competition on Tuesday, took a lot of flak for walking away from the other events. But gymnasts who know the horror of going the wrong way understand she went the right one.