[UA] Eternity

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 09:17 PM 09/22/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Greg --
>    Given that you co-wrote a game whose tag line is "What price will
>you pay for power?" this is an interesting post.
>    I agree that gymnastics is creepy because it is little girls, but
>fewer athletes die on the balance beam than do in boxing rings and on
>football fields.

Granted.  On the other hand, you don't see a lot of 16 year old football
players with titanium rods in their legs who are still playing -- and on an
international stage, to boot.  I guess part of what bothers me IS the
youth.  I remember what an unstable little weirdo I was at 14.  My current
self certainly wouldn't trust my then-self with any decision that could
damage my body's abilities permanently.  But that's just what some of these
children wind up doing, however unintentionally.

>    Do you think socio-economics play into it?  For Americans anyway,
>all the girls who do gymnastics come from homes and families where
>they don't have to be professional athletes to "get out" the way so
>many basketball and football players do.  If gymnasts were coming from
>the same neighborhoods as the OJ Simpsons and Chamique Holdsclaws of
>the world, would we think their priorities made more sense?

It might bother me even more to see them used up and cast aside at 30 if
they'd started out with nothing.  

>    One the sex angle side, my memory is that the sport started with
>young women and moved to pre-adolescents because those girls can
>simply do things at those ages that post-adolescent women can't.  In
>other words, gymnasts got younger for the same reason that football
>players have been getting bigger.  

That's a very telling point indeed.  But it also raises this question: What
is it about the sport that leads it to favor activities that punish older
(i.e. physically developed) women?  Look at men's gymnastics.  A leading
competitor there is 33, because the events place a much higher emphasis on
strength, rather than flexibility.  (Though God knows there's plenty of
both required.)  If women's gymnastics rewarded them heavily for doing iron
crosses, I'm sure the average age would skyrocket.

-G.
Sankyu

http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html


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