Technology, money or sports?

Is technology taking the sport out of sports?

Sounds like a GP essay question, ha ha.

Those hi-tech suits

Was just remarking to the husband the other day that Roma 2009 (World Swimming Championship) has become a farce. My reasons: First (and not too important), there are too many synchro events. Second, and much more important, the Arena and Jaked swimsuits helped produce records that no one will be able to break for maybe the next 5 years if they go back to using their old swimsuits.

I was wrong! There was this Australian coach who said that those records will still be around in the next 40 years.

Park Tae-Hwan (Olympic gold medallist), wearing his 'old' swimsuit, didn't even qualify for any finals.

Frankly, the idea of taking 45 minutes to squeeze into that long-legged skin-tight suit is quite off-putting. But I guess for medals and records, there are things that people will do.

Our Singaporean swimmers, apparently, are also hi-tech suit owners. And the plan is for them to use them at the SEA Games. Hmm, guaranteed to make us even less loved by our sporting neighbours, no?

Hawkeye
Hawkeye is old news by now, of course, but I just read this article about it. As an armchair tennis watcher, I have to say that I do like the use of Hawkeye because it reduces a lot of trouble linked to contentious calls. However, all players as well as armchair watchers know that Hawkeye is fallible since it is still based on human judgment. And anyway, it has been proven, occasionally, to be wrong. But overall, I guess it has helped.

Helmets and other stuff
Lastly, we now know for sure that Felipe Massa's helmet made sure he will be able to leave the hospital alive, and still speaking 3 languages.

However, all the safety precautions of race cars and outfits aside, the circuit is another place where the fight is, partly, between the technological haves and have-nots. Of course that translates into a big fat advantage for richer teams.

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From the looks of it, we will not be going back to the days when swimming races were swum in plain old swimming trunks.

Comments

True train school

‘Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.’ How would you like to have such a headmaster? I finally re-read (read it first as a teenager) Totto-chan, The Little Girl at the Window , a ‘school story’ by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton. Totto-chan is the name Tesuko Kuroyanagi called herself, and the book is about her life during her school days at Tomoe Gakuen. Totto-chan was expelled from her first elementary school because of her ‘disruptive’ behaviour, which included constantly opening and closing her desk top (because she was so thrilled by it), ‘vandalising’ her desk (because there wasn’t enough space on the piece of paper to draw) and standing by the classroom window waiting for street musicians to pass by or talking to swallows. Her mother, although probably alarmed about the ...

No wonder

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True train school - a bit more

I realise I didn't give the context of Totto-chan's story, so here it is: Mr Sosaku Kobayashi, the headmaster, started Tomoe Gakuen in 1937. Totto-chan was in school during the WWII years and the school was destroyed during the Tokyo air raids, before she completed elementary school. Here is something from the last chapter, entitled 'Sayonara, Sayonara!' "The school that had been the headmaster's dream was enveloped in flames... In the midst of it all, the headmaster stood in the road and watched Tomoe burn... 'What kind of school shall we build next?' he asked his university-student son Tomoe, who stood beside him. Tomoe listened to him dumbfounded. Mr Kobayashi's love for children and his passion for teaching were stronger than the flames now enveloping the school. The headmaster was cheerful." Indeed, a man ahead of his time. The school was never re-built, and Mr Kobayashi passed away in 1963. In her postscript, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi explained ...

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