In Rio, the American Marathoners Ran Faster, Virtually Everyone Else Ran Slower - Why?

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Paula of Brazil (15th) was not having a good time  

At the recent Olympic marathon, the two American-born athletes ran PRs, beating their previous best times by about a minute each. Galen Rupp, finished 3rd in 2:10:05 (previous PR: 2:11:13) and Jared Ward finished 6th in 2:11:30 (previous PR: 2:12:56).

Every other top ten finisher ran slower, sometimes dramatically slower than their PRs. Elide Kipchoge of Kenya finished 1st in 2:08:44 (5:39 slower than his PR of 2:03:05). Feyisa Lilesa finished 2nd in 2:09:54 (5:02 slower than his PR of 2:04:52).

The next ten finishers included 5 sub-2:10 marathoners. None of them did that in Rio.

Two Kenyans and one Ethiopian failed to finish in Rio. They had previous scorching PRs of 2:06:13, 2:03:51 and 2:04:24.

Before the race, on paper at least, it looked as if the Americans had no chance. But virtually all of the top runners had disappointing performances in terms of time.

Except for the two leading Americans.

Consider:

What explains this?

I really have no idea. But let's look at three possibilities:

1. The humid conditions were brutal. Only the Americans were ready for this. Undoubtedly, the Americans trained very well (more kudos to Rupp's coach, Alberto Salazar). But all the top runners are relatively wealthy professionals with top coaches who, among other things, anticipate the possibility of varying race conditions. Most of these runners train on multiple continents. This explanation does not seem satisfactory to me.
2. The pace over the first-half was slow. Thus, PRs were not in the cards for most runners (the reason Rupp and Ward ran PRs was because their PRs were relatively slow coming in). Indeed, I think each of the top 10 finishers ran a negative split (their first half was slower than their second half). But of course, this doesn't explain why the initial pace was so slow. Rupp claimed that his strategy was largely just to hang on to the favorite, Kipchoge for as long as he could. That sounds like a pretty good strategy to me, if you're Rupp. But why did Kipchoge and the other East Africans set such a slow pace at the beginning? It strikes me that if you are 7 or 8 minutes faster than, say Rupp, you want to take advantage of that over the full length of the race. The last thing you want is to have a 10,000 meter champion still with you with 10,000 meters to go. I'm not claiming Kipchoge and the other speedsters did the wrong thing. Obviously, they're smarter than I am when it comes to pacing. But I simply do not understand their strategy.
3. The Americans were simply hungrier than the others. The Olympics are now the one international race where there is no monetary reward. All the other top runners (outside of the Americans) have successful careers where they make hundreds of thousands of dollars by finishing well at other races. So, perhaps from the point of view of one of these professionals, if things are not going perfectly at the beginning of the non-paying Olympic race, why kill yourself by going fast and thereby perhaps messing up your performance at the next paying marathon? Indeed, this might explain why the three super-fast East Africans dropped out. (My point is not to be critical, only to understand.) But again, this doesn't really explain why the fast guys didn't make more of an effort to set a faster pace at the beginning, or why more of them didn't try to hang on for a Silver or Bronze. Even the pace in the second half of the race was slower than many of them had run before. 

Again, my intention is not to be critical of anyone, least of all the superb East Africans.

But I do think it's a puzzle.

Does anyone else have any better explanations?

Sign of the Cross - American Galen Rupp Takes Bronze in the Marathon

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Oregonian Galen Rupp, 30

A few minutes ago, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya won the 2016 Olympic Men's Marathon in 2:08:44. Feyisa Lilesa of Ethiopia came in second in 2:09:54 and Galen Rupp of the United States was third in 2:10:05.

It was the first American medal in the Marathon since Meb Keflezighi's Silver at Athens in 2004. Rupp was the first American-born medalist since Joan Benoit in 1984 and Frank Shorter in 1976.

Rupp's coach at Nike's Oregon Project is Alberto Salazar. 

Unusually, the lead pack included 25-30 runners for the first half of the race. Then, mile by mile it dwindled as the better runners picked up the pace. Rupp was in the lead pack of 3 runners at 21 miles. Finally Kipchoge, the favorite, took off, followed by Lilesa and then Rupp. At the end of the race, it looked like Rupp might close on Lilesa for the Silver. Unfortunately, he ran out of track. 

In another amazing performance, American Jared Ward took 6th place.

Kipchoge and Rupp each made the sign of the cross at the finish line.

The third-member of the American team was Meb Keflezighi, now 41. He had problems at around the ten-mile mark and fell back, ending up in a still respectable 33rd place.

Incredibly, Keflezighi tripped and fell flat on his stomach only a few feet before the finish line. He raised himself on his forearms and for a moment it looked like he would crawl across the finish line. Instead, to the delight of the crowd, he did a pushup.

In his first post-race interview, the boyish Rupp said he was motivated by the movie, "Happy Gilmore."

When Women Were Barred from the Marathon - "If that were my daughter, I would spank her"

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"Get the hell out of my race!"

I remember the "You've come a long way, baby" Virginia Slims cigarette ads from when I was a kid. At the time (1969) women might have come a long way, baby, but that "long way" was short of 26.2 miles. Or at least, women were officially prohibited from running that full marathon distance.

In those days there weren't very many marathons. Boston had been going since 1897 (one year after the first modern Olympics), and perhaps outside of the Olympics, it still was the marathon. New York didn't get started until 1970. Within a few years there would be hundreds of marathons in the United States.

Women weren't initially allowed to participate in Boston (or New York in its first year). And the women's marathon wasn't added to the Olympics until 1984.

If the term "sexism" has any meaning, this policy was sexist. But the prohibition was also due to the awe and fear that people held the marathon in those days. Normal humans didn't run them. They were for highly-trained athletes. Even so, people died. You, know, like that first Greek guy. A woman running? What if she permanently injured herself? It could affect her child-bearing ability.

Kids (those under 18) also were generally prohibited. I ran two marathons at the age of 14 - Ocean State in Rhode Island in 1978 and Boston (unofficially) in 1979. As I recall, I had to get a special note from my doctor, who even so was against it (though he signed the note). It might affect my bone growth. What if I had died?

But, especially in hindsight, the prohibition on women was stupid. And it was often enforced in a nasty way. In 1966, Roberta Gibb Bingay ran Boston in 3:21:40. The organizer of Boston, Will Clooney, refused to recognize her time: "She merely covered the same route as the official race while it was in progress." Well, okay, she didn't run it officially. But whose fault was that?

In 1967, Kathrine Switzer entered the race officially but without disclosing her sex. This provided the opportunity for an iconic photo (see above). Organizers Clooney and Jock Semple became aware of her participation and physically tried to remove her from the race: "Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!" Switzer's boyfriend protected her by giving Semple a punch/body block. Within days, the American Athletic Union had terminated Switzer's membership on the grounds, among other things, that she had run farther than the allowable distance for women and had run without a chaperone (it's unclear why Switzer's boyfriend didn't count).

Yes, in some ways, the United States used to be like Saudi Arabia.

Clooney's reaction to her finish was a classic of something:

Women can't run in the Marathon because the rules forbid it. Unless we have rules, society will be in chaos. I don't make the rules, but I try to carry them out. We have no space in the Marathon for any unauthorized person, even a man. If that girl were my daughter, I would spank her.

In 1972, women were finally allowed to run the Boston Marathon. In fairness, we should note that this was at the urging of Jock Semple.

However, women still weren't allowed to start with the men. Their start was mandated to be ten minutes earlier.

When the gun went off, all the women sat down.

For guess how long.

Twelve years later, the first women's Olympic marathon was run in Los Angeles. Mainer Joan Benoit won it in an American record time of 2:24:52.

The women's world record is now 2:15:25, set by Paula Radcliffe of Great Britain in 2003.

It would have been the men's world record in 1956.

That may or may not seem cool to you. I think it is.

In a great many obvious things, we're less wise than before. But in a few ways, we've come a long way, baby.

Just be careful of those cigarettes. They seriously mess with your wind. 

BREAKING: Matthew Centrowitz Wins First American 1500 Meter Gold Since 1908!

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Left to right: Ayanleh Souleiman, Taoufik Makhloufi, Matthew Centrowitz and Nick Willis

USA! USA! USA!

Sorry.

A few days ago, I claimed that the United States was starting to chip away at East African long-distance running dominance. A few minutes ago, University of Oregon miler Matthew Centrowitz just took out more than a chip.

Centrowitz won the Gold in the 1500 meters. Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria won the Silver and Nick Willis of New Zealand won the Bronze.

Perhaps surprisingly, Centrowitz took over the lead early and held it for most of the race. But Makhloufi looked strong. In that last 200 meters, I was certain the American was going to lose the lead. 

Not this time.

Centrowitz beat the surging Makhloufi by .11 of a second.

Fittingly, Centrowitz's current coach is American distance legend, Alberto Salazar.

Final Results:

1. Matthew Centrowitz, United States: 3:50.00 
2. Taoufik Makhloufu, Algeria, 3:50.11 
3. Nick Willis, New Zealand, 3:50.24
4. Ayanleh Souleiman, Djibouti, 3:50. 29
5. Abdalaati Iguider, Morocco: 3:50.58
6. Asbel Kiprop, Kenya: 3:50.87
7. David Bustos, Spain: 3:51.06
8. Ben Blankenship, United States: 3:51.09
9. Ryan Greyson, Australia: 3:51.39
10. Nathan Brannen, Canada: 3:51.45
11. Ronald Musagala, Uganda: 3:51.68
12. Charlie Grice, Great Britain: 3:51.73
13. Ronald Kwemoi, Kenya: 3:56.76

When a Catholic Gutted it Out to Win the Most Exciting Boston Marathon in History

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Alberto Salazar after winning the 1982 Boston Marathon

The first time I was ever exposed to the term "last rites" was at the age of 14. At the 1978 Falmouth Road Race (7 miles), a 20-year-old runner I had never heard of named Alberto Salazar finished the race with a body temperature of 107 degrees. He was put in a bathtub of ice and given last rites by a Catholic priest.

It was premature.

Salazar's superhuman effort that day, pushing his body to almost the point of death (though he only finished tenth), would be emblematic of his running career. For the next few years he would be one of the top marathon runners in the world, winning three New York City Marathons and one Boston Marathon. He set an apparent world record at New York in 1981, though it was later reversed, as the course was found to be 148 meters off.

Salazar's marathon career was short. He was competitive for a few years in the early 1980's, and then made a brief comeback in 1994, winning the "uphill" version of the 56 mile South African Comrades ultramarathon.

The common wisdom is that Salazar's career was short because he pushed himself so hard. I think the common wisdom is correct. Among runners, the V02 max number - how fast oxygen can be converted into blood and pumped back into the muscles - is one of the primary determinants of success. Salazar had only an average V02 max score, at least relative to other elite runners. Other factors are body efficiency - form and muscle-to-weight distribution - and sheer guts.

Salazar had sheer guts.

In 1982, Salazar won the Boston Marathon in one of the closest finishes up to that time. He and fellow American Dick Beardsley ran together for most of the race. Or rather, for most of the race, Beardsley was a few steps ahead, with Salazar acting as his unshakable shadow. With less than a mile to go, Salazar moved into the lead, and since he was the favorite, people thought the race was over. But Beardsley hadn't given up. With only a few hundred yards to go, he dodged the close crowds and accompanying motorcycles to try to overtake Salazar.

But watch Beardsley! Beardsley is making a move! It's come down to this! Beardsley and Salazar! The motorcycle's got to get out of the way! Here comes Beardsley! He's gonna make a move on Salazar! It is neck and neck! One of the closet finishes ever! Here comes Beardsley! Beardsley on the left! There's Salazar! Beardsley, can he have enough? . . .

Almost.

Salazar, the winner, embraced Beardsley at the end. Their exhausted bodies were swept through to the winners stand by what looked like a million helpful Boston cops.

The video below, from a local Boston TV station, is notable for a number of things. First, there are the strong Boston accents. But what would you expect? Also, notice all the people and vehicles on the course. Surrounding the two leaders there is a bus, a car, numerous motorcycles and a herd of bicycling spectators who in those days were allowed to ride along with the runners. The crowd presses in, narrowing the running corridor to what looks like only a few body lengths in places.

Then of course there is the unbelievable finish. Last minute sprints in marathons are more common these days, but in that era they were unusual. Generally someone would take a larger lead much earlier. If someone caught up, they would take a large lead in turn. As a kid watching that race, it was the first marathon I'd ever seen where it really mattered what you did in the last one-hundred yards. I couldn't imagine what that would be like.

Earlier I said that the common wisdom was that Salazar's career was cut short because he generally pushed so hard. But some people think that his career (and Beardsley's) was cut short simply by that one race.

Salazar was a Cuban-American Catholic. Like many Catholics he drew away from his faith as a younger man, but his struggles as a runner, among other things, brought him back to the Church. A few years ago, at a comparatively young age, he had a heart attack that stopped his heart for fourteen minutes. His autobiography, 14 Minutes: A Running Legend's Life and Death and Life chronicles his relationship with Christ and His Church, among other things.

As an athlete, would you want to burn twice as bright but only half as long? What would Christ want for you?

Runners Holding Hands

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Take a look at the two pictures above.

The one on the left is from the first running of the London Marathon in 1981. It features American Dick Beardsley, 24, and Norwegian Inge Simonsen, 25, signifying that they agreed to tie the race by holding hands across the finish line with a time of 2:11:48.

The one on the right is from the recent running of the 2016 Olympic women's marathon in Rio. It features the "Hahner twins," Germans Lisa and Anna Hahner, 26, crossing the finish line in 81st and 82nd place with a time of 2:45:32, also holding hands.

As far as I know, no one at the time criticized Beardsley and Simonsen. Rather, they were praised for their "sportsmanship."

The Hahner twins on the other hand were blasted for, in essence, not showing sportsmanship. German Athletic Federation Director Thomas Kurschilgen sternly lectured:

It looked as though they completed a fun run . . . 

Every athlete in the Olympic competitions should be motivated to demonstrate his or her best performance and aim for the best possible result. Their (the Hahner's) main aim was to generate media attention. That is what we criticize.

This is of course extremely stupid and nasty, especially considering the source (in one sense, Kurschilgen was their own coach).

And, yes. It's sexist.

Beardsley and Simonsen's mutually-agreed tie was part of an accepted, though rarely practiced, tradition in track and field. It obviously affected the outcome of the race. If they had not agreed to tie, one of them would have crossed the finish line first, a few seconds faster than they both actually did.

But the Hahners finished midway back in the pack, in times way off their PRs. Any professional marathon runner will tell you that in those circumstances, whether you come in 81st or 82nd, or in 2:45:00 or 2:44:00 makes absolutely no difference in the world.

If it was all-good for Beardsley and Simonsen, it certainly should be all-good for Lisa and Anna Hahner.

There's nothing wrong with holding hands.

And there's nothing wrong with smiling at the end of a race, either, by the way.

Kurschilgen snidely implied that the whole thing might have been planned and that the Hahners hadn't given it their all (since they were so far off their PRs).

Tell that to the other competitors - most of whom did not PR. In the Olympics, you usually don't.

And the Hahners had actually run apart for much of the race:

“In all the marathons we ran together before, there was a point in the race we had to split up,” Anna said. “This was also the case in the Olympic marathon.” 

Anna said she started faster, and then Lisa’s group caught up with her at around the 17-kilometer mark, at which point Anna said they ran about three kilometers together. 

“But then I realized I couldn’t run this pace, and I had to let them go,” Anna said. “Lisa was always not far from me. After 40 kilometers, there was a turning point, and I knew, ‘Okay Anna, two kilometers to go to close the gap to Lisa.’ I invested all I had and 300 meters before the finish line, I was next to Lisa. It was a magical moment that we could finish this marathon together. We did not think about what we were doing.”

Interestingly, this year's women's marathon featured not one, but three sets of multiples -the Hahners, fraternal twins Kim Hye-Gyong and Kim Hye-Song, 23, of North Korea and identical triplets Lily, Liina and Leila Luik, 30, of Estonia. Only two of the Luiks completed the race, and Lily and Leila completed it apart (2:48:29, 2:54:38) but the Kims finished, you guessed it, precisely together in 10th and 11th place at 2:28:36.

They weren't holding hands. For all I know, holding hands is illegal in North Korea, even if you're not running a marathon.

But at least the head of their sports federation isn't a Nazi.

Race, Genes and Running

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Dennis Kimetto, fastest slow-twitch man in the world

One of the most notable phenomena in competitive running over the last one or two generations has been the dominance of African runners or runners of African descent.

While it is still politically incorrect to say it in many quarters, it is now incontrovertible that the explanation is largely genetic. Disagreement on this, at least by informed sources, is ideological, not scientific.

But this tells only half the story. Among black runners, those of West African descent (henceforth, "West Africans") dominate sprinting or short-distance races while East Africans or those of East African descent (henceforth, "East Africans") dominate long-distance events. Indeed, the "split" between the two groups is almost total. No East Africans have made it into the ranks of elite sprinters, while no West Africans have made it into the ranks of elite long-distance runners. While both groups obviously have black skin, they are quite different genetically. 

West Africans have generally competed for Nigeria, Great Britain, Jamaica and other Caribbean countries, Canada and the United States. East Africans have generally competed for Kenya and Ethiopia. There are a few other countries involved and exceptions such as ex-pats, etc.

Here are some interesting facts and figures:

• In the last eight Olympic games, 71 of the 72 runners in the 100 meter finals have been West Africans (I believe one was from Fiji). Their dominance has been almost complete.
• Out of the top all-time 125 times for the marathon (26.2 miles), East Africans have 121 spots and North Africans (all from Morocco) 3. The sole "white" athlete to clock a top 125 performance - Ryan Hall, recording a 2:04:58 time at the 2011 Boston Marathon - participated in a bizarre weather race where the runners had a huge tailwind for the entire course (Hall was fourth behind three East Africans). The world record for the men's marathon was set by Kenyan Dennis Kimetto, running a 2:02:57 at Berlin in 2014.
• Recently, white athletes have perhaps started to make small inroads in the long-distance category - Galen Rupp's Silver medal in the 2012 Olympic 10,000 meters being the most conspicuous examples.
• West African dominance is nowhere near as great in the 110 meter hurdles. I have yet to see a satisfactory explanation for this.
• In women's races, Africans have dominated but not as completely. In this year's Olympic women's marathon, white and Asian runners took five of the top ten spots, though they won no medals. The non-East African group featured three Americans, one Belorussian and one North Korean. 14 of the top 25 women's marathon times have been run by East Africans. Although, notably, the world record and indeed the fastest three times were run by a white athlete - Paula Radcliffe of Great Britain.    

I'm not going to go into a long and boring explanation as to why genetics is determinative here. But the numbers above are very suggestive, and counter-theories quickly break down. For example, those arguing for a "cultural" explanation need to account for how, say, a champion sprinting culture seems to track athletes of West African descent (and only athletes of West African descent) in wildly different countries and societies - the Caribbean, North America, Europe and West Africa itself.

Let me now make three crucial points:

First, genetic distributions are just that, distributions. To say that East Africans may be genetically "superior" in long-distance running is to make a claim about statistical averages and merely means you are likely to find a higher than normal set of runners that have, say, the potential to run a Marathon in under 2:10:00 among East Africans than for other groups. It's perfectly possible that a white runner might end up being an international marathon champion. But of course, since the set is smaller, the odds are lower.

Second, genetics determines potential, not ultimate performance. Potential must always be met with proper training. The fact that white runners used to dominate (more than one or two generations ago) can almost certainly be ascribed to East African countries previously failing to have the resources to adequately train or field teams that could compete internationally (and hand in hand with that, fewer athletes from Kenya or Ethiopia even realized that they might have international potential). This changed in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Third, ascribing running potential to genetics does not take away from the deserved honor or praise for the individual athletes. All Olympic athletes were gifted with "good" genes for their particular sports. But they complemented their biological luck with smart and hard-work. Michael Phelps has a perfect swimmers body - an anatomically unusual body in many ways - but he had to train for years to take proper advantage of it.

What do we mean by good genes for runners?

Obviously, there is no one "sprinter's gene" or "marathoner's gene." Rather, genetic endowments give one a certain "package." These days, international running is so competitive that one must have top scores in every element of the package to race at an elite level.

What goes into such a package?

Some of it is visually obvious. Sprinters often look like lean football players. They have large chests, large biceps and large thighs - all for pumping over short distances. Long distance runners have smaller thighs (though thickly-muscled ones) and their upper bodies are often almost emaciated. For long-distance runners, what you have above the waist - whether fat or muscle - is often worse than meaningless. It's just excess weight.

For women, who almost always have much less bulky muscles, the difference is less pronounced. It's always been interesting to me how some female long-distance runners (though not all) almost look a bit chunky. And I should say that as a male long-distance runner who has often been over my ideal running weight, this fact annoys me.

What you can't see, however, is also important. Look at a picture of a muscle. Everyone has a combination of white and red (or fast-twitch and slow-twitch) muscle fibers in their muscles, a combination that is mostly genetic. Whites give you temporary explosive power; reds give you sustained power. If you have more fast-twitch fibers, then you're a sprinter and quite honestly have virtually no potential to excel at long-distance running. If you have more slow-twitch fibers, then you're a long-distance runner and will never be able to sprint very well. This is pretty much an iron law and it partly explains why, say, some of your friends like "jogging" or running 5Ks and some don't.

Of course, certain sports demand a basic competence in both. Bruce Jenner did well enough on average in both categories to win the Olympic decathlon. But whatever his muscle composition (fast-twitch vs slow-twitch - I suspect he was a fast-twitch man), he would never have had the potential to be an Olympic champion in both sprinting and long-distance running.

What length differentiates sprinting from long-distance? The answer is a distance somewhere between 400 and 800 meters. Champion 100 meter runners have often been champion 400 meter runners. 800 meter athletes have been competitive in long-distance races from the mile to the marathon. But as far as I know, no 400 meter runners have ever excelled at 800 meters, and vice versa.

It would be fascinating to see a 600 meter race with the football players competing against the emaciated skeletons. Though, oddly, these races are rare. Appropriately, the last 200 meters of the 800 is often referred to as the "shadow" or "death zone" part of the race. You can go all out for a bit more than 400 meters, but that won't get you to the finish line. You have to have the proper "gas" to complete the last lap.

Other important factors for long-distance running include your V02 max - the efficiency at which your body converts oxygen to blood back into your muscles. V02 max is important but not all-important. Studies have shown that elite East Africans have good V02 max ratings - as any long-distance runners would - but ratings not significantly higher than, say, top whites or Asians. Lance Armstrong has an extremely high V02 max, as one might expect, but he only managed to clock a 2:59:36 in his first marathon - good for an amateur - but far short of elite level. One of the top endurance athletes of all time only managed to beat my best marathon time by 6 minutes! (To be fair, Armstrong ran a 2:46:43 the next year.)

Which brings us to body type and form. (Armstrong's cyclist's body differs significantly from a runner's body and will be inferior for running, even compared with that of amateurs such as myself.) In body type and form, East Africans also seem to have a large advantage for running. One East African observer wrote:

A group of us were sitting watching a local competition one day . . . A British runner was over here in Kenya running against us. We noticed first the big difference in leg structure; his legs were like oak tree trunks whereas ours were like willows. When we jumped we floated over; when he jumped it was a major upheaval (quoted in The Lore of Running by Tim Noakes, p. 442).

Again, this only really comes to the fore in elite competition where all parts of the "package" must be close to optimum.

As the reader can tell, I find the whole subject fascinating, though I hope it doesn't seem obsessively so.

One final caveat is this. Your genetic endowment obviously cannot be changed. But you do have control over how you make use of it. Among other things, you may discover modes of training that will render your particular distribution more useful to you, perhaps overcoming whatever small disadvantages you might have against others. This is why it's not surprising to me that the era of almost complete East African dominance might be coming to an end (or at least a partial end), as non-East Africans get even more scientific about their training. Though, of course, the East Africans are also getting more scientific...

And here's a last thought about race. Or should I say "racism"? In the United States, it's often looked upon as "racist" to dwell on genetic differences between races. But  at least as far as athletic performance goes, to me, non-genetic theories can often seem just as "racist," if not more so than any other.

For example, it is still occasionally alleged that Kenyans are faster because they had to run to school as kids. As if everyone in Africa lived in huts miles away from the nearest one-room schoolhouse run by missionaries or whatever. It took years for any earnestly non-racist Western theorist to actually ask any Kenyan athletes whether this was really true. One just laughed:

The school was right next to my home. I never would have run there. What do you think I am, crazy?    

Funniest Olympic Announcer Monologue Ever

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This clip from the NBC broadcast of the 2004 Olympics in Athens is a true classic.

So is Mary Carillo.

Carrillo is a former professional tennis player turned sports broadcaster, mainly for tennis and the Olympics.

She had moderate success in tennis (her highest world ranking was 33). In 1977, she won the mixed-doubles championship at the French Open with partner and childhood friend John McEnroe.

In broadcasting, her intelligent analysis and commentary has earned her a number of awards and her occasional acerbic quips have earned her a niche following as well as a few enemies.

She once called men's doubles luge "a bar bet gone bad."

Below is her famous badminton segment (which, if you haven't seen it, takes a turn you will not anticipate) as well as a funny "people and personalities" interview with the Zamboni driver at the 2006 Winter Olympics. For good measure, I have also included a serious and moving bio-short that Carillo did on Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame.

Enjoy.

In Defense of the Olympics

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The pagans weren't wrong about everything

I feel the chivalrous urge to stick up for the Olympics at a time when it seems to me that the Olympics are getting slammed from all sides - including the Catholic side.

A few days ago, John Paul Meenan wrote an anti-Olympics piece called, "The Neo-Pagan Limits of the Olympics." It's written in that sort of affected curmudgeonly style that helps to give an author cover. If anyone challenges the arguments, the fact that the piece is a bit of a rant means that any challenge can be deflected - the author was simply engaging in hyperbole for comic effect, etc.

That's not a criticism per se. Rather it's an admission that I might be taking Meenan's piece  a bit more seriously than it was intended.

I'm defining "high-Cath" as describing someone who thinks the Faith is at least partly about dissing things that are liked by ordinary people. While Catholicism should never go along with the majority for the sake of it, the opposite attitude is equally stupid. As I use it, the term has nothing to do with the Traditional Latin Mass or preferring High Mass to Low Mass, etc.

And I'm not alleging that Meehan is a high-Cath. I am claiming that in this piece at least, he writes in the style of one. And as you will see, I find that annoying.

Here's the full piece, with my annotations in red. I've numbered what I take to be Meenan's distinct anti-Olympics arguments. There are many of them.

As always, if you disagree with anything I say or my snarky tone, feel free to rip into me in the comments. I can take it. I've been working out.

The much-awaited Olympics is now upon us in Rio, a city in a country in a continent mired in unmanageable debt and corruption. Surrounded by poverty-stricken favelas, the city has poured billions into Olympic venues, security, advertisement, all to watch a few thousand overhyped young athletes strive to excel at their chosen sport. 

This sets the sort of Olympics-as-decadent-dystopian-nightmare tone. Poverty-stricken favelas is a redundancy, by the way. I get the fact that you need to modify it, otherwise readers might think the city was surrounded by appetizers, but another adjective might have been preferable. 

1. The Olympics often take place in corrupt countries. So does pretty much everything these days. This is not the fault of the Olympics. 

2. Olympians are overhyped. I disagree. Michael Phelps is the greatest swimmer to have ever lived. That's pretty cool. I do not think he has been overhyped. On the other end of the scale, I do not think, say, the archers or the shooters or the rowers are overhyped. For better or worse, almost no one even knows who they are. 

Don’t get me wrong: I do not harbour any dislike, to say nothing of hatred, for athletics. In fact, I have enjoyed many pleasant hours playing various kinds of games at a recreational level, even though, partly due to the circumstances of my life, I mostly enjoy solitary physical activities, cycling, kayaking and hiking. Perhaps I find them more conducive to prayer and reflection  or perhaps it is connected in some subconscious way to the memory that no one wanted to pick me for a team as a wee lad. You know, past traumas and all that. 

This establishes the high-Cath cred of the author - contemplative and solitary nature sports are his thing - as well as adding a bit of self-deprecatory Englishness - wee lad, all that. But that there is no dislike for athletics in the author's harbor is disingenuous, as we shall see. 

So allow me to clarify that I find it very difficult to care about professional sports which have, by and large, become a bloated, idolatrous entity, blown vastly out of proportion to their importance to our culture. As the well-worn analogy goes, sports arenas are our new cathedrals, and the players our new panoply of saints, to whom we offer devotion and praise. Grown men quite literally weep and gnash their teeth when their team seems to be on the verge of losing, or winning; people riot in the streets regardless of the outcome. Much of our lives revolves around sports, and even those who are not ‘fans’ (short, of course, for ‘fanatics’) are caught up in the hype of the big events, the current Olympics, the World Cup, the Stanley Cup, the Super Bowl, and so on. 

3. Professional sports have become somewhat idolatrous. The author might be on to something here, but where one draws the line between innocent non-pretentious fun and idolatry is often a question best left to snobs. However, I do not think the general argument applies so much to the Olympics. The Olympics only happen once every four years. You don't see people rioting for Michael Phelps, etc.   

I have never been one for this charade, not least for the reason that I would rather ride a bike than watch another man do so. 

4. Doing is better than watching. I've run eleven marathons. Take it from me, watching them is a lot more fun than running them. 

Of course, watching sports does give one a sense of vicarious enjoyment, especially if one participates in the sport in question. Seeing the cyclists of the Tour de France pedaling through the glorious scenery of the Pyrenees, one can imagine oneself doing the same thing, perhaps a tad slower, of course, on a less expensive bike, and with a bit more clothing. 

More high-Cath cred stuff - pedaling through the glorious scenery of the Pyrenees. It's getting annoying now. 

Yet what have sports become? We may judge the value with which we hold a thing by how much money and time we are willing to spend on it, and we as a culture spend far too much of these valuable entities on this ultimately rather utilitarian activity. Parents devote their entire weekends driving their children, boys and now girls, from game to game, tournament to tournament. Sunday Mass? Prayer? Cultural activities? Reading? Music? Family time? Do most modern families even consider such a scale of priorities? 

5. Recreational sports absorb too much time in the lives of our families. To the extent that this is true in some families, I would say that it's part of the more general problem of kids' lives often being too busy - perhaps to build their college resumes or whatever. That's not the fault of the Olympics. And notice how the author goes from saying that doing is better than watching to condemning too much doing. 

At the professional level, sports have become a money-driven machine, with their millionaire players selling their set of skills to the highest bidder amongst the billionaire owners. Team loyalty? So long as they pay me enough; and if ‘my team’ does not perform well, I can be traded before the playoffs. Geographical loyalty, and rooting for the ‘home team’? How many players are actually from, or care a fig for, the town or city whose name the team adopts, or even from a contiguous region or country, for which they play? How many actually even live there? 

6. In many professional sports, money rules. There is no home-town loyalty anymore. This has little to do with the Olympics. The Bahrain team is the exception that proves the rule. 

The Olympics brings this charade to its apogee, or nadir as the case may be, with untold billions now thrown into its gaping, insatiable maw (at the last venue, the impoverished Russians will be paying off the $15 billion tag for Sochi perhaps until judgement day, and Rio will be no different. Montreal just finished paying off its own debt from the more-sober era of the 1976 Olympics a few years ago). 

7. Olympic hostings are often money pits. Governments waste money. This is not a new insight. And 30-year loans are 30-year loans. I can testify to that. 

We watch the desperate athletes, after spending their entire lives training, trying to shave quite literally a thousandths of a second off the last recorded time, a result dependent upon so many other factors (wind, a cold virus, altitude, cloud cover, climate change, you name it) that ‘chance’ has about as large a role as ‘effort’. Their whole lives revolve around their body and its training until, in their mid-twenties, it is worn out, and they are often left injured, disillusioned and depressed as they drift into sedentary middle-age. I wonder especially of the female athletes, delaying marriage and family, as they pummel and morph their bodies into lean, muscular male-like physiques, all for the sake of a gold bauble, or something far less. 

This paragraph is so over-the-top I don't know where to start. 

8. Olympic athletes train their entire lives for competitions that will ultimately be resolved by arbitrary things out of control of the athletes. This is just out and out false. Ask Michael Phelps. 

9. Olympic athletes are often left "injured, disillusioned and depressed as they drift into sedentary middle-age." That's silly. First of all, there's no evidence that this is any kind of a thing. In the amateur era Olympic athletes went on to become doctors, coaches, insurance salesmen or whatever else their talents and reputation determined for them. It's the same in the professional era except now many of them go into their post-competitive lives with a fat bank account. And as far as drifting into sedentary middle-age is concerned, whatever happened to pedaling, kayaking and hiking through glorious scenery?    

10. Female Olympic athletes delay marriage and family. Most women ad men delay marriage and family these days. And as a Catholic, I disapprove. But there's no evidence this happens more to Olympic athletes than anyone else. Many female athletes are done with their careers fairly early, age-wise - earlier than they would have finished with, say, grad-school. Other female competitors have had multiple children during the course of their careers. Indeed, there are a perhaps surprising number of female champions who have done this. Obviously, if you've made or are making money, it's easier to raise a family and train. But maybe that's dirty.

Also, notice how the claim went from they're all professionals (many of them millionaires) who make too much money to the ignorant idiots are ruining their bodies "all for the sake of a gold bauble, or something far less." 

I hate it when people contradict themselves. 

Here is something to ponder: No matter how much humans train, some animal will always beat them handily. The world record holder for the 100 metre dash, Usain Bolt, ran it in 9.58 seconds. Compare the fastest human with Sarah the 11 year old cheetah, well into late-middle age for the large cat, who lies around most of the day, and who can run the same distance easily in 5.95 seconds. No one will ever out-wrestle a chimpanzee, even if defanged and declawed, for they have four times the strength of an adult male, nor out bench-press a gorilla, who could probably lift a humvee with ease and can bend tempered steel; and who will ever out-swim a dolphin, which can clock speeds of 25 miles per hour (Michael Phelps, the Olympic prodigy whose feats will likely never be repeated, swims at his best 6 miles per hour). And none of these animals ‘train’ in our sense of the word. They’re just born that way. 

11. Animals are better at sports. Wake me when the pigeons play the raccoons in water polo. 

Higher, faster, stronger? Scientists estimate that we are perhaps shaving off 1/100 of a second on records each Olympics, and one physiologist claims the fastest any human can ever possibly run the 100 metres is 9.44 seconds, and the same asymptotic limits apply to most other timed sports. And, as we have witnessed of late, many of these records are tainted by doping and other nefarious activities. 

12. Olympic records only fall by teeny-tiny amounts. Tell that to Olympian Alma Ayana, who just broke the Women's 10,000 meter record by 14 seconds. That's 1,400 times greater than 1/100 of a second. I figured that out in my head while kayaking. 

13. We're now at the point where we're coming up against the limits of human ability. No, we're not. See above. 

In any case, the Olympics aren't about setting records. They're about beating people from other countries and winning baubles. 

14. Records are often tainted by drugs and such. See, that's why we're higher than the animals. 

Whatever ‘excellence’ the Olympians are striving after, it is not specifically human excellence. 

15. ? I have no idea what this means. In any case, I thought, according to the author, we could never be as good as animals anyway. 

There was a reason why the Olympics were, until recently, limited to amateurs, and forbidden to professionals. The originators of the Olympic ideal thought it unseemly and inhuman to devote one’s whole life and existence to ‘sport’, which should be a leisurely activity, done on the side. After all, there are many other higher, specifically human pastimes and virtues, music, art, science, literature, contemplation, which we do not share with animals, and which are far more fitting to cultivate. That was part of the sub-plot of the great 1981 Olympic film Chariots of Fire: Beware of making sports professional and all-consuming, for we risk a loss of a significant part of our humanity. 

I'm going to give non-flippant replies to the next few, because the issues are important. 

16. Sports are marginal anyway. Above, the author said he had nothing against athletics. Now he's dissing them as being obviously lower than, say, music or art. I simply disagree, and I do so as a Catholic. Indeed, one of the things that differentiates the Catholic view of man from some other options is that Catholic philosophy claims that we're more than disembodied souls merely designed for contemplation or whatever. In a thousand years, most of our cultural achievements (at least the physical ones) will be dust. And Michael Phelps will still be one of the greatest swimmers who ever lived. 

17. "Beware of making sports professional and all-consuming - see Chariots of Fire." In Chariots of Fire, one of the English athletes trains by trying to clear champagne glasses placed on the hurdles by his butler. No doubt that's what high-Cath sports should really be about. Also in that film, the great Christian runner Eric Liddell refused to compete on a Sunday. So, he competed instead in an event that he didn't train for and wasn't supposed to be very good at. He won a surprise victory - one of the greatest Olympian upsets ever recorded. That was a victory for Liddell and God. And it was a great moment in Olympic history. That occurrence is not a strike against the Olympics. It's an argument for them.         

The Church has always warned against the danger of such a ‘cult of the body’, a “neo-pagan notion” leading one “to sacrifice everything for (the body’s) sake, to idolize physical perfection and success at sports” (cf., CCC, #2289). Along with this idolization of the body goes a perverse hedonism, as we see in the spike in Tinder usage in the Olympic village, a smartphone app which allows its users to ‘hook up’ with those whom one finds immediately attractive, by swiping their photo. To ‘facilitate’ this fornicatory process, 450,000 condoms were handed out to the athletes. Given there are about 11,000 competitors, that’s about 41 condoms per person, or 82 per couple, which is saying something for a two week event. 

18. The Olympics promotes a "cult of the body," which can lead to a perverse hedonism among athletes. I'm tempted to make a joke about this but I won't. Sin isn't funny. Okay, other people's sins can be funny. But still. Many contemporary athletes take advantage of the sexual "hook-up" culture. I can't argue with this. But don't blame the Olympics - blame YouCat. And that was only a half-joke.  

I would have thought sexual incontinence would decrease one’s athletic performance, draining one’s focus, attention and determination (as you may recall from the first Rocky film, and, more historically, Roman legionaries). 

Most Olympic athletes would agree that "partying" in any form - whether it includes "hook ups," drinking or just staying up late - is not a good idea before an upcoming event. But notice how the author goes from claiming that many athletes have spent the major portion of their lives in an unhealthy obsession with competing at the Olympics, to assuming that once they arrive there, they then decide to throw all of it away for transitory kicks. Athletes that mess around, do so after their events are over. Not that I'm justifying it. And not that I have any experience with it. After my marathons I would always unwind by taking solitary walks through glorious scenery.       

Of course, I hope and presume most athletes do develop other skills and virtues besides sports and ‘hooking up’, particularly virtues of the mind and soul, to which the body is most definitely subordinate, so they can thrive in terms of what it really means to be human, beyond their brief, all-too-short athletic careers, over almost before they begin. 

Oh, man. The author has nothing against sport but now he's bundling it with screwing around, literally. And athletic careers are just as brief and meaningless as that drunken date with the Brazilian, I guess, or whatever. That's a slander against every Olympian who ever lived.  

We must always bring ourselves back to reality and realize with the full focus of our intellect that most sports are simply a bunch of guys, and now girls, running, swimming, fighting, or throwing, hitting and chasing a piece of rubber around various kinds of surfaces, which animals (and now robots) can do far better. Such activities are not the point of life, at least of human life. 

Now we're upping the ante - not only are animals better at sports; robots are too. Which of course is insane. By the way, is this still even a Catholic argument? 

Yet much of our time, our energy, our focus, are consumed by them, and many men quite religiously spend their entire weekends and time off watching younger, fitter men (and women) do things they only wish they could do. Harmless fun, to an extent, I suppose; a vicarious form of warfare sublimating our aggression, perhaps; a way to perfect one’s body, yes, but only if one participates in ‘real life’, getting out of Plato’s illusory cave of televised entertainment, into the real world where we can live and move and have our being. It is all a matter of perspective, and we in our artificial modern age have sadly put the last things first, and first things last. 

With the many positive aspects of sports, let us always bring things back to such a real perspective, and what it truly means to be human.

And so it ends, as these sorts of arguments always do, with Plato. I rest my case.

Plato was a kayaker. 

Some of you are aware that Pope Pius X gave his perhaps surprising imprimatur to sports in general and the 1908 Olympics in particular at a time when many Catholics considered the revived Olympics of the Ancient Greeks to be "neo-pagan." We cannot know what that rough pontiff might have thought of the 21st century games, but I do know this: Pius X was a saint, not a snob. While he may have been critical of the Catholic masses for things that Popes should be critical about - sinning, etc. - he would never have engaged in the sort of high-Cath posturing seen in the above piece.

The pagans weren't wrong about everything, though Plato was.

God bless the Olympics.