Chandra Clarke

Award-winning entrepreneur. Author. Professional Optimist.

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A Broken Record

April 28, 2020 By Chandra Clarke 3 Comments

Image credit: Pixabay

I know this is sacrilegious, but I have to say that I’m not much of a summer Olympics fan.

This is perhaps because I’m Canadian and the Canadian teams have traditionally, to use the technical, sports medicine term… sucked at the summer games. We frequently get beat in the medal counts by such economic and social powerhouses as Bulgaria.

To be fair, this is not the fault of our athletes, who are top notch. Our beach volleyball players, for example, are among the toughest in the world. This is because for 10 months out of every year, they’re practicing on beaches that are about as warm and inviting as a meat locker, wearing nothing but fur-lined swimming trunks.

This is mostly the fault of our Olympic team management. For a start, most of our athletes didn’t even know they were going to be on the Canadian team until last month, when they received a phone call that went something like this:

TEAM CANADA: Good morning, Bob? We’ve selected you to be on our cycling team.
BOB: Oh. Right. I didn’t even know I was under consideration.
TC: Well you were. We think you’re top notch.
BOB: Okay, well, I suppose I should take the snow chains off my tires eh? Practice biking in Athenian conditions.
TC: Hey! Great idea!

Canadian summer athletes aren’t very well-funded either. Indeed, most of them earned the money for their airplane tickets to the Olympics by selling fur-lined swimming trunks and snow chains to each other.

It’s also not like our athletes are missing by much. At first it’s disheartening to think your country’s entrant came in eighth place … until you realize that the difference between first and eighth is less than one quarter of one second.

Which brings me to the issue of human achievement. The games have long ceased being of interest to me because we’ve reached the limits of what we can do. Desperate for any competitive edge, athletes are doing things like buying special swim suits that cut drag, using performance enhancing drugs, or even worse, practicing their sports cliches by telling journalists that they gave 110% percent out there.

Indeed, we have so little room for improvement in standard sports anymore that people are resorting to participating in increasingly silly competitions, like, say, running for the US presidency.

Or consider the entries in the Guinness Book of World Records. Kevin Cole of Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA, holds the record for — I kid you not — the longest spaghetti strand blown out of a nostril in a single blow. Vincent Pilkington of Cootehill, County Cavan, Republic of Ireland, plucked a turkey in 1 minute 30 seconds. There is even an entry for the fastest winkle picker in the world. (And is it just me, or does winkle picker sound like a Shakespearian insult? “Horatio! Thou art a winkle picker, methinks!”)

All of which leads me to ask important journalistic questions like: How does one learn one can eject spaghetti from one’s nose? (Answer: I really don’t want to know.) and Did the turkey get any sort of recognition for being the fastest plucked of its species? (Answer: Yes, a pot of cranberry sauce and a good basting.) and Just what the heck is a winkle anyway? (Answer: A close relative of the wonkle, obviously.)

Perhaps it’s time then to consider some new sports and sports venues. Why not put the next summer games on the Moon?

Then athletes really would have to put in 110% … just to deal with the lower gravity. And Canadians might just have a chance.

It’s darned cold up there, you see. We could sell fur-lined spacesuits.

 

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A Snowball’s Chance in… Oz?

November 22, 2016 By Chandra Clarke Leave a Comment

snowman-1449142_1280

Not content to come in fourth in the world medal count for the summer Olympics, Australians now want to make the podium more often in winter sports.

Yes, Australia, that dry, flat, and unspeakably hot country with roughly 20 million people and 98 million sheep.*

To that end, Aussies built a $45 million (US) winter training facility in Melbourne, where temperatures regularly exceed 30C. (For American readers who don’t understand metric units, that’s hotter than 10 football fields.) This madness is apparently inspired by the fact that Australia scored a gold in freestyle moguls and a bronze in aerial skiing during the last winter Olympics.

Now, I applaud competitive spirit, I really do. I also appreciate a desire to beat the odds, daring to dream and attempting the impossible. But this project raises many questions.

First there is the issue of how Australians plan to find enough snow to ski properly. I’m told by a reliable source that it does snow periodically in the Blue Mountains, but I have yet to see photographic evidence of same. I suspect what’s really happening is that the local icing sugar factory is having emissions problems.

Of course it is possible to manufacture snow — ski resorts do this all the time if there isn’t enough local precipitation. However, the technique requires the air temperature to be either just above freezing, or below freezing; otherwise all you get out of the machine is water. Indeed, Australians have been unknowingly buying used snow making equipment for years: business liquidators have been marketing them as lawn sprinklers.

Assuming you attempted to make snow only in the Australian “winter” and only at higher altitudes, there’s still the question of ground temperature. Snow might come out of the machine only to melt on contact; seeds that have been dormant for decades waiting for a drop of moisture would suddenly spring to life. Skiers would find themselves trying to slalom through mud and tropical rain forest. At this stage the kangaroos would call their mates over to point and laugh.

There’s also the issue of the Australian’s national dress. Winning at skiing, like most other Olympic sports, has come down to a matter of milliseconds. A loose t-shirt and shorts aren’t very aerodynamic. Neither is a surfboard strapped to the back.

Indoor training would be possible, but costly. To compete in figure skating, speed skating or hockey, you need … ice. To make a decent ice surface you need lots and lots of water, something that can be hard to come by in arid Australia most years. You also need something known as an ice resurfacer (also called a Zamboni), a device especially made for making ice smooth. If Australians think their airplane tickets are costly, wait until they see the shipping costs for one of these babies, which weighs in at 2900 kg (6400 lbs).

Apart from the technical aspects, there’s the problem of the athletes, coaches and spectators themselves. An ice rink is a climate-controlled building, and most Aussies have strange religious objections to either central air or central heat; they prefer to tough it out.

That said, Australians are well-known for suffering hypothermia if the temperature drops below 20C; they shake their fists at the sky if a single cloud dares to drift by. Thus, they will categorically *not* want to train or sit in an ice rink, which is about as toasty as their food freezer. Plus there’s the problem of all that beach sand they’ll track into the building, which will make the ice into mush. They’re going to have to import their athletes from Canada.

The real kicker however, will be at the Olympic podium. That’s because assuming they can overcome all these geographical and climatic obstacles and produce world class winter athletes, you just know the announcer is going to credit the medal win to…

…the Austrians.

* Give or take.

Photo Credit: Tylerindiana / Pixabay

 

 

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