Triathlon Winning Age

Athletes are able to perform well at very young age.  Females genetically mature two years earlier, and we see them at the podium.  Jacob Birtwhistle is a young athlete that we see frequently at the front, short, fast races are his favorites.  Ten years ago we saw several teenagers fighting the podium.  Hollie Avil at the age of 18 was winning triathlons and lead the rankings for a while.  Alistair Brownlee was able to win at the age of 21 against the best, not before.  Since Hollie Avil and Kristen Sweetland we have not seen teenagers fighting for the podium competing against the best of the field.  Taylor Knibb is there but she is too far from being a successor of the Hollies.  She is winning out of the mistakes make by her competitors; her running is not there as it was the case of Hollie Avil.  As the sport of triathlon is maturing the tasks and abilities are growing and athletes need longer learning process to be able to win against the best.  Jonathan Hall speaks as a coach in Canada:

Peux-tu nous en dire plus à propos de ton groupe ?

Eh bien, le groupe est formé de jeunes athlètes de BC et d’autres qui sont venus à BC pour leurs études.  On a ce fonctionnement où Libby « perfuse » des athlètes au groupe, ce qui me permet d’avoir des internationaux dont le rôle va être d’améliorer l’environnement d’entraînement. Nous n’avons pas de Canadiens avec pas mal d’expérience et qui pourraient jouer le rôle de mentor donc on compte vraiment sur nos internationaux pour jouer ce rôle-là auprès des jeunes canadiens et qui, en retour, sont entraînés. Ce n’est pas compliqué, mais ça demande un peu d’organisation. Je vois nos réussites tout en soulignant les échecs de Tri Can. On avait une athlète de 16 ans qui gagnait tout en junior au Canada et pour moi ce n’était pas une bonne chose qu’à 16 ans, on ait une athlète évidemment très talentueuse, mais on devrait avoir une athlète de 19 ans dans nos rangs en junior trop matures pour être battues par des athlètes de 16 ans. Donc là, on se retrouve avec tout le monde autour d’elle en disant que cette athlète est LA solution à nos problèmes. Ça a un air de déjà vu…

http://www.trimes.org/2017/02/jonathan-hall-se-fait-trimer-entraineur-national-de-tri-can-retour-a-la-realite/

Instead of being happy for having a 16 year-old winning to all teenagers, Hall is concerned that they wasted an entire generation of juniors because they do not have the abilities to be competitive.

We have the same problem in Mexico.  The winner of the elite category in the last Merida Triathlon was a 17 year-old female.  The difference from Hall is that very few people noticed this huge failure with our youth.  Several generations were lost as well as the money that went away with the failure.  As Hall points out, this 17 year-old could be seen as a solution to our problems developing viable athletes or we hamper the development of this athlete to stop looking to our failure.  We will see in the future, but we are ready to face the problem with our athlete and we know what is coming.

1	91	RAMIREZ ALAVEZ CECILIA	Oaxaca		Elite Femenil Y	00:11:44 (26) 01:34 00:01:13 01:04:05 (26) 34.64 00:00:27 00:16:46 (1) 03:21	01:34:15	1	66
2	101	ARROYO AQUINO ITZEL GUADALUPE	CDMX	TRILIFE	Elite Femenil Y	00:11:28 (17) 01:32 00:01:05 01:04:29 (25) 34.43 00:00:29 00:17:16 (2) 03:27	01:34:47	2	69
3	71	DE LA TORRE FLORES VANESA	Jalisco	ASDEPORTE	Elite Femenil Y	00:11:15 (2) 01:30 00:00:53 01:04:48 (3) 34.26 00:00:24 00:17:58 (3) 03:36	01:35:18	3	70
4	72	CARRENO CRUZ ADRIANA ISAURA	Jalisco	ASDEPORTE	Elite Femenil Y	00:11:37 (24) 01:33 00:00:56 01:04:23 (4) 34.48 00:00:32 00:17:59 (4) 03:36	01:35:27	4	73
5	67	PEREZ FLORES CECILIA GABRIELA	Jalisco	ASDEPORTE	Elite Femenil Y	00:11:14 (1) 01:30 00:00:55 01:04:46 (1) 34.28 00:00:25 00:18:25 (5) 03:41	01:35:45	5	75
6	102	SANCHEZ ALBO AMALIA ISABEL	CDMX		Elite Femenil Y	00:11:36 (23) 01:33 00:01:02 01:04:23 (21) 34.48 00:18:46 (6) 03:45	01:35:47	6	76
7	107	GARCIA VELEZ DANIELA	Durango		Elite Femenil Y	00:11:19 (10) 01:31 00:01:01 01:04:39 (15) 34.34 00:00:51 00:18:10 (7) 03:38	01:36:00	7	77
8	74	CASTANEDA REYES PAOLA	Durango		Elite Femenil Y	00:11:31 (21) 01:32 00:01:03 01:04:23 (10) 34.48 00:00:34 00:18:41 (8) 03:44	01:36:12	8	78

Triathlon and Postmodern Era: Doping

I was reading what the Russian agency published (Sputnik).  Assuming that it is not a “fake news.” This is the article that follows the previous one written by us.  We are aware of the meaning of the Sputnik agency but what it shows is a subject we know and wrote about in our previous posts; it also makes us aware of the “white privilege.”

https://sputniknews.com/world/201801171060833854-olympics-doping-schoeman-tested/

The outcome of that dispatch is unknown, and it is notable Schoeman's name has not been connected with doping at any point since. Nonetheless, the method by which Schoeman administered the drug likewise remains unknown.    

Prednisolone is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency when orally, rectally or injected into the bloodstream or a muscle, on the basis it can "produce a feeling of euphoria, potentially giving athletes an unfair advantage." As a result, athletes may only apply the drug topically, for skin rashes, unless a TUE can be produced.

The ability of prednisolone to augment athletes' abilities is backed by empirical evidence. In 2007, the US National Institute of Health (NIH) conducted a double-blind study, in which ten male athletes completed two cycling trials — one group was given a placebo, the other oral prednisolone.

It reminds me of the Chinese athlete that entered Sydney with the doping substance in her suitcase just before the Olympics’ opening.  She carried them as she was transporting peanuts.  She looked by western standards that she was very used to carry the vials with her when traveling.

Another female swimmer, Yuan Yuan, and her coach, Zhou Zhewen, were disqualified from the championships after being caught with 13 vials of the muscle-building human growth hormone at Sydney airport.

https://www.reuters.com/article/doping-china/doping-top-chinese-swimmer-ouyang-banned-for-life-idUSPEK27485620080627

Umberto Eco gave an example of the difficulties in the postmodern era regarding meta-discourse and behaviors because they are formed from different discourses and at the end we have a mixture of meta-discourses without meaning in the main discourses.  It becomes what the intellectuals call “unintelligent statements;” a sort of “loose cannon” way of thinking, using a language of another meta-discourse. It happens in triathlon when I read what Beltran (ITU coach) says regarding Schoeman’s doping and criticisms:

Vicent Beltran‏ @Vicent_3eltran 19 ene.

Más

It is very sad reading some coaches’ comments on the social media regarding other doping cases, specially when you know that these coaches carry positives on their back but unfortunately never been published. #Hypocrite

Beltran does not see the importance of doping and let us know that there are similar cases that exist in triathlon covered-up.  Is he defending somebody or an organization?  It reminds me of Salvatore in the Name of the Rose:

The first physical description that we get of Salvatore is also the description of his peculiar “language”: his “speech was somehow like his face, put together with pieces from other people’s faces, or like some precious reliquaries I have seen….fabricated from the shards of other holy objects” (47).  In many ways, Salvatore foregrounds the vision of the novel that houses him.  Certainly he is a curiously amphibious creature, dwelling in a borderland between the world of the story and yet outside of it, too.  He is not attached to any particular identity, mode of language, or point of view.  If he is a fool-like figure, by his very presence in the text (in Bakhtin’s words) “ he makes strange the world of social conventionality.”  For, he is invested with “the right to be ‘other’ in this world, the right not to make common cause with any single one of the existing categories that life makes available.”[2] Admittedly, Bakhtin is talking about the role of a Shakespearean fool, here; clearly, he has very little “right” to be “other” or “different” in The Name of the Rose.  But Salvatore is important to us precisely because he is not important to anyone in the novel.  He is written off, at a stroke, as a vulgar, leering, winking, lubricious grotesque – the vulgar cellarer’s (Remigio di Varagine) lackey and purveyor of tricks and charms!  He is important, though, because his gratuitous flights of verbal bricolage and manic-digressive equivocations expose the fluid, unfixable nature of language, and therefore the instability of the structures of meaning which encode and stand in for the conventions of contemporary life.

https://schoolworkhelper.net/umberto-ecos-the-name-of-the-rose-comedy-carnivalesque/

Jean- François Lyotard, French Philosopher speaks about this problem for the first time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEpZJ0NpxH8

This problem of doping is not going to be solved with more laws and punishments, but educating athletes, coaches and Governing Bodies in all aspects of life.  Education is what takes athletes to excel, not physical conditioning. Physical conditioning without education generate just “thugs.” Tony Minichiello has said it clearly.   Education for Governing Bodies and coaches, so they can learn the proper metalanguage to achieve the goals of triathlon and triathletes.

  

21 nov. 2017

Triathlon and the Art of Coaching: Toni Minichiello

Listening to interviews given by Toni prompts us to write what we have written in the past.  We are going to do it the same way as before; showing what we have written below.  Toni helps to write again.  At the end, education is like that; keep insisting until “el burro toque la flauta:”

https://dairmagazine.com/state-coaching-nation/

Toni doesn’t miss a beat, “The Governing Body Coaching Award is not fit for purpose. End of. Coaches are not equipped with enough information or supported to develop the abilities they need to achieve what they’ve set out to do: add genuine value to athletes.

Remember, effective coaching is about three things; process, environment and relationships. The current award doesn’t even come close on part one; process. They are simply no-where near providing coaches with enough information. Currently it’s like strapping someone into a car for the first time, pointing out the pedals, gear stick and steering wheel before firing up the ignition and leaving them to figure it out. It’s beyond irresponsible. A comprehensive understanding of technical process should be a fundamental foundation stone for any coaching qualification”…

“Where do you start trying to fix it?”

“Understanding. Education. Like everything in life. Governing bodies need to strive to understand what effective coaching is and what it can achieve whilst many coaches, who’ve come through the current system, also need to take a look at themselves”.

“In what way?”

“Coaches can forget that coaching is a giving process and put themselves at centre of things. A great coach gets satisfaction from giving. You get what you give. It’s a mind-set you must adopt to be effective. When you coach others, you’re giving to yourself through the act of giving to others”. Toni laughs, “This is getting deep. Look, as soon as you allow the focus to shift to yourself you’re lost and more importantly so is your athlete”.

Triathlon in the Postmodern Era

Long time ago we began speaking of the Postmodern Era, it is impossible to give a date when it started, but the transition from Modern Era is slowed and we have seen it mature over the years.  I even gave a Grand Rounds Conference at SUNY Syracuse (1993) titled: “Medicine in the Postmodern Era.” I like what Umberto Eco wrote about it in “Apostille au nom de la rose.”

“I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her "I love you madly", because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still there is a solution. He can say "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly". At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly it is no longer possible to talk innocently, he will nevertheless say what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence.”

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.” ...

“The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?”

The Jewish said: 
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”

Trump is the metaphor of Nero:

History has blamed Nero for the disaster, implying that he started the fire so that he could bypass the senate and rebuild Rome to his liking. Much of what is known about the great fire of Rome comes from the aristocrat and historian Tacitus, who claimed that Nero watched Rome burn while merrily playing his fiddle. Gangs of thugs prevented citizens from fighting the fire with threats of torture, Tacitus wrote. There is some support for the theory that Nero leveled the city on purpose: the Domus Aurea, Nero’s majestic series of villas and pavilions set upon a landscaped park and a man-made lake, was built in the wake of the fire.

“It would have been seen as very inappropriate on the part of the elite in Rome,” says art historian Eric Varner. “They would have been happy if Nero had built the Domus Aurea out in the country, but to do it here in the city really was an extraordinary kind of statement.”

Tacitus was a member of this Roman elite, and whether there is a bias in his writing is difficult to know. Indeed, Tacitus was still a boy at the time of the fire, and he would have been a young teenager in 68 A.D., when Nero died. Nero himself blamed the fire on an obscure new Jewish religious sect called the Christians, whom he indiscriminately and mercilessly crucified. During gladiator matches he would feed Christians to lions, and he often lit his garden parties with the burning carcasses of Christian human torches. Yet there is evidence that, in 64 A.D., many Roman Christians believed in prophecies predicting that Rome would soon be destroyed by fire. Perhaps the fire was set off by someone hoping to make the prediction come true.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/great-fire-rome-background/1446/

Tacitus did not have internet as a rival, so Nero’s Fake News were not available.  But let see how triathlon lives this postmodern reality full of “fake news” and people willing to believe them eagerly.  How to say things without innocence not using “fake news” is our task.  Trump banned CDC from saying evidence-based or science-based to introduce his “fake news” regarding global warming and other “fake” statements; the same for our governing bodies ruling our sports that do not read scientific journals and continue with same “neronian” politics.  Who would believe that the IOC did not know about the Russian doping? Or the bribes to get the Olympics.  ITU knows about the behavior of the FMTRI selecting international competitors and says nothing about it (see Marcas Mínimas in this blog).  From what I was informed some other Federations have followed the same behavior as the Mexican Federation.  Some members of the ITU were informed to get help from them but complaints were not understood and the behavior from Federations was not a problem (it is like Hollywood regarding sexual harrasment)

To relate our statements to the purpose of our blog, that it is in no way “bitching” about things, lets see triathlon coaching. Toni Minichiello said what we have to say (see previous post):

Remember, effective coaching is about three things; process, environment and relationships. The current award doesn’t even come close on part one; process. They are simply no-where near providing coaches with enough information. Currently it’s like strapping someone into a car for the first time, pointing out the pedals, gear stick and steering wheel before firing up the ignition and leaving them to figure it out. It’s beyond irresponsible. A comprehensive understanding of technical process should be a fundamental foundation stone for any coaching qualification”…

“Where do you start trying to fix it?”

“Understanding. Education. Like everything in life. Governing bodies need to strive to understand what effective coaching is and what it can achieve whilst many coaches, who’ve come through the current system, also need to take a look at themselves”.