COACHES, TEACHERS AND THE OLYMPICS

February 22, 2018

WITH ALL THE HOOPLA THAT IS GOING ON NOW WITH THE Winter Olympics, I have been wondering how all these athletes have managed to ensnare all those coaches to get them to achieve their extraordinary results. Citius Altius Fortis used to be the motto of the Olympic Games. Faster, Higher. Stronger. I don’t remember seeing the Sochi games at all because we were in Turkey and Turkish TV, or at least the cable channels we are subscribed to, show very little of these Winter Games. I believe in part this is due to the fact that Turkey probably had less than 10 athletes competing in Sochi and they were ranked in the back 50, so there was no interest there. There is no interest on my part either, because the Games I remember vaguely are those in Lake Placid NY in 1980 and the ones in Sarajevo in 1984, because they were so prominent in French TV when we lived there. Afther that it’s all a blur. Lillehammer (because of the funny name) and the Nagana, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Turin in whatever order they were but that I did not see at all. I remember the Lake Placid ones because I went with Pedro Ramírez Vázquez and we saw the US defeat the Soviet Union in Hockey. That was an apotheosis and an apoplectic game.

THE SPORTS HAVE CHANGED TREMENDOUSLY SINCE I last saw the Games, as is to be expected. For one thing Snowboarding appeared and I only knew about this being an Olympic Sport in Sochi, although apparently, it’s been around for about 30 years. Perhaps it is here, and in aerial skiing, that the changes are more spectacular, from a gymnastics point of view. Of course, the skiers and the skaters go faster and the curling competitors sweep more assiduously, but the incredible prowess of the snowboard competitions is almost impossible to believe. How is it possible that the competitors start from a platform of the height of a 50-story building, glide swiftly downhill and then are projected into the air where they do the 360, the 540, the 900, 1080 with the Double Full Full and the chicken salad, the roast beef, the melon, the indy, the cork and the stale fish or the Double MCTwist 1260. The numbers, by the way, refer to the turns that the snowboarders do while they are flying. A 360 is a full turn, a 1080 is three turns.

YOU CAN IDENTIFY THE SNOWBOARDERS BY THEIR OUTFITS but not their genders. As a matter of fact, it is very difficult to identify the gender of any Winter Olympics competitor except for the Figure Ice Skaters. The rest (except for the Snowboarders) have sleek, dynamic, lycra and spandex-like shiny materials that are so tight, and the athletes are so athletic, that there are no external signs of gender. Even the speed skaters are difficult to identify. The US outfits have a paraboloid hyperbola in the crotch of both genders that became in fact generic.

I Assume that these patches minimize friction but they are, nonetheless, peculiar to a newcomer like me. The Snowboarders on the other wear loose jackets and pants, just like they do when they are having fun in the slopes rather than competing. Both skiers and snowboarders seem to have an extraordinary affinity to their earbuds, which they wear up to the last minute before they launch their event, except for the Snowboarders, who keep them on while competing and, apparently, listen to their music to tune out the noise of the crowd.

MANY COMPETITORS ARE THERE FOR THEIR THIRD OR EVEN fourth Games. They are long-lived and it is not unusual to hear that some of them are over 30 years old and one is even over 40-year-old. This is an individual who gets to the top of the gate of the giant ski jump, which is about 1 ½ times as tall as the Empire State Building, then places his skis on two parallel tracks going down the hill and starts sliding down. Once he reaches the bottom of the ramp, and about 90km/hr., he spring on his legs, bends his body to be as closely parallel to the skis as he can, flies the length of one and a half football fields and lands 140 meters from where he took off, at around 70 km/hr., then springs on his knees, levels his body with his arms and comes to a stop by twisting his skis 90 degrees. He is not only 40. He is absolutely insane! I can understand a 19-year-old doing this, but this geezer (of Sports) is even saying that he may not yet retire…

THE INTERNATIONAL SPORTS FEDERATIONS ARE CONTROLLED by the countries with supremacy over the sports that they allegedly regulate. So, the competitions are geared to provide as many medals as possible. Therefore, the events are, in each discipline the same, but repeated in many combinations. There is the skiathlon, the sprint finals, the 10 km freestyle, the 15 km freestyle, the 4X 5 km relay the 4X 10 km relay, the freestyle sprint, the mass start 50 km. The same principle applies to the downhill skiing with slalom, G Slalom, Downhill, Combined, and so forth and the same applies to the Figure Skating, the Snowboarding and now even the Curling has Mixed Doubles for the first time. No wonder that Norway has won over 300 medals followed by more that 280 by the US, 260 or so by Germany and closely followed by the Soviet Union or Russia as well as France. Countries like China are beginning to inch up in their competition with solid results and other countries like Japan and Korea, Italy and Slovakia, Latvia and Byelorussia get some medals but they are way down in the totem pole. Some countries are there because their athletes are very astute. There was, in the past, a Mexican alpine skier, who was born accidentally in Mexico but was, in fact from Luxembourg, and changed his nationality so he could compete, since he could not make the Luxembourg team. Then there are the famous bobsledders from Jamaica and now there is even a Skeleton (like a sled) competitor from Nigeria and a Speed Skater from Colombia. This guy carries the flag, parades, competes and cheers all-in-one.! And he is good. And on it goes, with the incredible anecdotes of these Olympic Games

AS I WAS SPORADICALLY WATCHING THESE GAMES ON TELEVISION, at odd hours of the early morning or afternoon, I began to think not only about the incredible performances of these athletes but as to how they got there. There are about 8 million skiers in the US and pretty much the same number of snowboarders. Only about 24 of them make it to the US Team in each categories and similar numbers apply to the other categories: maybe 10 for luge, 4 for skeleton, 20 for aerial skiing and so forth. The whole team is about 240 individuals out of around 20 million, which comes out to around 1 competitor per 100 thousand practitioners of the sport. It must be pretty tough to get a spot in the team. Certainly, the parents had a lot to do with their choices and successes, as this seems to be a pattern in these sports that require a tremendous amount of parental support in most cases, also their original trainers but, in the final analysis it comes down to the coaches’ commitment to these individuals. A teacher and a coach do pretty much the same thing: they help an individual acquire knowledge, competence or values. Yet we seem to place more emphasis on how the coaches that provide the competitors with exceptional skills that make them succeed in world events are extraordinarily great, venerated and acclaimed, but we do not seem to value the teachers as much. What is it about a coach that is romanticized and admired? Why is it that after a game or a competition, everyone celebrates the coach? Why is it that some coaches get paid millions of dollars a year? What is it about coaches that they are given medals?

Why does the same thing not happen to teachers?

Getting someone to slide downhill at over 100km/hr., with skill and without killing herself is certainly an achievement. But is it not also an incredible achievement to get an 11-year old to solve an algebraic equation? Or to learn to present cogent arguments in favor, or against a proposition? And this does not apply only to the United States. Same thing happens in Mexico, in Ghana, in France or the Netherlands. I am not minimizing the coaches of the world. I believe they are extraordinary individuals who not only teach, cajole, inspire, transform and support the competitor. But does a teacher not do the same, many times over, with many “competitors” in her classroom? If we started for a moment admiring the teachers as we admire the coaches, maybe the world would be a different one. And the celebration of the mentoring, support and guidance that teachers provide to young people all over the world would take the champion platform that Olympic Athletes and their coaches occupy.

THE WINTER OLYMPICS WILL BE OVER THIS WEEKEND and we’ll have to wait another four years to see these competitions again. I hope Johnny Weir with his incredible hairdos and astounding costumes, matching those of Tara Lipinski, both co-hosts of the Figure Skating competitions return. They were almost more exciting than the competitions themselves. Their comments were not based only on statistics or a knowledge of the sport but, more importantly, they provide a true critique of the performances. Having won Figure Skating competitions themselves, they brought a profound knowledge not only of the technique required but also of the additional and all important dimension of artistic performance. Plus the fact that Johnny dresses so wonderfully extravagantly while keeping a straight face and that he and Tara match their costumes in style, makes Figure Skating a true TV Spectator Sport. I hope to see more follies of the Snowboarders and aerial skiers. I certainly hope to see more exciting events. I hope to see more of Johnny and Tara.

BUT IN THESE FOUR YEARS, AS I THINK ABOUT THE COMPETITORS and coaches all around the world, I will be thinking more, and more often, and admiring more and more highly, the millions of teachers around the world, who without all the hoopla, make our children, and our society, a better place to live in, teach tolerance and algebra, hygiene and respect, geography and thinking to the billions of young people who will be making our world the place I aspire to live in.