Olympic athleticism — part 2

Here’s more on the awe-inspiring Olympics, including two additional sports and the exciting conclusion of my personal badminton story.

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Ancient Olympic pentathlon (Wikipedia)

Music: Jens East — Daybreak (ft. Henk) www.soundcloud.com/jenseast
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution V4.0

Transcription (remember, this is a direct transcription of what I said and is not actually how I write!):

Welcome to 9 Minutes of Wonder. I’m Betsy Hedberg. I hope this podcast will help you rekindle your sense of wonder for this awe-inspiring world. If you like what you hear in the next few minutes, please subscribe and share.

So we’re talking about the Olympics and the awe-inspiring Olympic athleticism, but last time I told you a story about my own badminton experience. If you didn’t listen, go back and listen to part 1 and you’ll hear how I almost flunked out of high school because I could not pass a badminton test in my physical education class at the end of high school.

And yeah, what happened? I did end up getting a university and some advanced degrees. So yeah, I made it through high school. I think what happened was the coach told me to go sit down and I thought I was going to get a failing grade. And then at the last minute, he said, “Try one more time. If you get this serve, you pass. If you don’t, you flunk.” No pressure, right? So I did it. I can’t believe it. I don’t know — sometimes when you’re under pressure, you succeed. So I did graduate high school, in case the suspense has been killing you.

And now I want to continue talking about the other party sport that we used to play. And of course, that is what we called ping-pong, but don’t call it ping-pong. It’s table tennis. And it is on a totally, totally different level in the Olympics.

And it is not ping-pong. I mean, in general, it’s the same game, but you could not go up against one of these Olympic athletes and get a single point even if you spent, you know, all day trying. It is so different because they put such a spin on the ball and they do it so quickly and it goes so fast.

They have to have the most incredible concentration. And I noticed these people before they’re going to serve and between games, just really getting into that zone.

And table tennis is also dominated by the Chinese, although there are people from many countries who play it well. I watched a Chinese woman who now is a Portuguese citizen. Her name is Fu Yu. And she, I was really rooting for her. She got to the second round, and then she lost at the very end. It was a pretty exciting match.

And she said in an article that I read that everybody she knows back in China plays table tennis. And she said her mother plays table tennis, even though she’s already 70 years old, she still plays it every day. She was playing it when she was a child. And it’s just a really strong part of the culture, at least in the part of China where she grew up. And so of course she developed into somebody for whom this is a sport that is all around them. And then she became, you know, really, really good and was in the Olympics.

The last specific sport that I looked up, and there’s so many I, you know, I could go on and on, right, but this is nine minutes. So there’s this sport called the modern pentathlon, which doesn’t even begin until August 8th, and is going to be held mostly at Versailles, which will be a beautiful setting of course. And the modern pentathlon — I really didn’t know much about or anything about it — includes fencing, freestyle swimming (I don’t know how they do that at Versailles, but we’ll find out beginning the 8th of August)…so fencing, freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, pistol shooting, and cross-country running. And this is going to be done within the span of three days, I believe August 8th until the 11th, or maybe they do it in one day. I think I read they do it all in one day, but maybe there’s different rounds. I’m actually not sure. We’ll have to stay tuned for that.

But the thing that’s incredible to me is all of these events are done by the same person. So you have to train in fencing, freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping. I mean, how different is fencing and swimming from getting on a horse and the horse jumps over? I am not — I love horses — but I’m not great on horses either. I can’t imagine how they do that. And then you have to be good at shooting a pistol and you have to be a good runner. So, oh my gosh, this is the most impressive one in certain ways. You have to be a generalist and an expert at the same time.

And this sport is based on the traditional pentathlon from the ancient Greeks, which was modeled on the skills that a soldier would have needed back in that time. So the traditional pentathlon in ancient Greece consisted of the foot race, the running race, the javelin throw, the discus, the long jump, and wrestling. And of course those sports are still part of the Olympics, but they’re not a part of what’s called the modern pentathlon. The ancient one was first held in 708 BC, which was the 18th Olympics.

And I’ll read you this quote by Aristotle about these events. He wrote, “Beauty varies with each age. In a young man, it consists in possessing a body capable of enduring all efforts, either of the race course or of bodily strength. While he himself is pleasant to look upon and a sheer delight. This is why the athletes in the pentathlon are most beautiful, because they are naturally adapted for bodily exertion and for swiftness of foot.”

I kind of like that. How does one person do all of these sports? But I love this because we are always encouraged to specialize, right? And to be complete experts in one thing. Yet this sport requires multiple skills that are really different from each other. And again, they have to do all this training on different sports, and they also have to train with horses.

But apparently also this is the last time the Olympics will be this way, because they’re going to get rid of the horse part for the LA Olympics in 2028. The equestrian competition became very controversial last time because one of the women, the German competitor, punched her horse at the Tokyo Olympics. And you can find a video of that if you want. Nobody wants to watch a woman hitting a horse, but she hit him kind of on the side because the horse wouldn’t jump.

And I also find this interesting because the horses are not their horses, right? So the competitors and the other equestrian races bring their horses. You can actually see a video about that too, how they get the horses on the plane. It’s pretty interesting.

But in this modern pentathlon competition, they are assigned horses, and this horse would not cooperate with this woman. And apparently her coach also was demanding that she hit the horse. And it was this major controversy.

Of course, nobody should treat horses like that. And so they’re going to just remove the whole event or the whole equestrian part and replace it with obstacle racing, which kind of sounds more interesting anyway, and better for the horses. So stay tuned for four years and you’ll get to see that.

Anyway, I’ve talked a lot about various sports and gone on and on about the Olympics because I’m pretty excited about them. So I hope you can find some enjoyment in them too, even if you just watch a little bit. And by the next time you hear my voice, it’ll probably all be behind us, but hopefully you’ve enjoyed thinking about this awe-inspiring Olympic athleticism anyway.

See you next time.

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