Obama and Triathlon

Is there a relationship between Obama and triathlon?  There are many relations to what happened in the USA and triathlon.  The most remarkable relationship is perseverance.  The efforts of many people made the USA what it is and has represented for the world; even though we could not agree with many things that they have done.  Since Martin Luther King, the road to the White House started, fifty years before Obama´s speech.  Martin Luther King is responsible for carrying more than 90% of voter for Obama in the black population, and responsible for keeping the dreams alive of many others.

Both speeches give hope and keep the dreams of the struggling ones to help them to continue with what they believed.  This is what coaches and leaders of teams should do to keep the inertia and to improve synergism by improving team work.  Luther King´s speech was oriented to get the black people together; Obama´s to keep the USA together.  In Mexico City Olympics, we saw a manifestation of Luther King´s work when the Americans were first and third in the 200 meters.

The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute was a protest made by the African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympic Games in the Olympic Stadium, Mexico City, Mexico. As they turned to face their flags and hear the American national anthem (The Star-Spangled Banner), they each raised a black-gloved fist and kept them raised until the anthem had finished. All three men, including Australian silver medalist Peter Norman, wore human rights badges on their jackets. The event was one of the most overtly political statements^[1] in the history of the modern Olympic Games. In his autobiography Silent Gesture, Tommie Smith stated that the gesture was not a "Black Power" salute, but a "human rights salute".  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute

Gennadi Touretski says that 10,000 hours in the water are necessary to discover talent.  Steve Scott, who has the record of most below 4-minutes in the mile running, says that 3,000 of aerobic miles are necessary to start training.  What I mentioned points out that talent has a huge component that is perseverance.  We need perseverant athletes to have the chance to “discover” talented athletes.  This is not obtained by polishing Aladdin´s lamp; we have to educate children.

Someplace in this blog I mentioned Obama´s rules for his children.  I will repeat them because this is what somebody needs to have in order to create champion.  Fathers do what they learned and considered important. “Monkey see monkey do,” to express it colloquially:

In general, the rules that the Obama kids must abide by are pretty straight forward. Here are a few others that the first lady shared with Yahoo! Shine:

They must do their chores. Though the White House has a large staff, Malia and Sasha have chores of their own. "They have to make their beds, they have to clean up their rooms," she said last year. "They have chores to do, and they don't get their allowance until they can prove that they've done their chores for the week."

They can't watch much TV. "We have clear rules about screen time and TV time. None during the week if it doesn't involve schoolwork," she said. They're allowed some TV time on the weekends, but even then "I try to fill up their weekends with a lot of stuff so they wind up missing that, too," Mrs. Obama confided. "It's like, sports and games, and then, oh, it's bedtime, so sorry you didn't get your TV time in." 

No R-rated movies for pre-teens. While Malia, 14, has gone to a few R-rated movies (after they've been vetted by her parents), Sasha, 11, is not allowed to watch R-rated movies at all, and even kid-centric TV shows get monitored. "Nowadays, sometimes what's on the kid programming, some of that teenage programming is pretty high-level stuff, too," the first lady said. "So you find that you have to constantly just be engaged with them and hear what they're learning and talk to them about the shows that they're watching."

They can only have healthy snacks. "We have fruit. We have some cereals, some crackers, nuts, dried foods that are out," Mrs. Obama said. "We try to put out healthy snacks in clear containers, because seeing dried fruit gives the kids the idea, 'Oh, yes, if I'm hungry I could really have this or the nuts or the soybean things.' And my whole thing is if you're really hungry, you can have that. If you don't really want it, then you're not really hungry." 

They must play a team sport. "Sports is an expectation, and we say it's an expectation because it's about good health," the first lady said. "It's about learning how to play on a team, learning how to lose, learning how to win gracefully, learning how to trash talk and not get your feelings hurt." Individual sports are great, but "I think team sports are important particularly for girls, where they learn the camaraderie of being dependent on other people for the victory," she told Yahoo! Shine in April. "And I think my girls need to learn how to compete. Whether they choose to do it long term, I just think it's an important opportunity for girls to have."

Quitting is not allowed. "Kids tend to quit when it starts getting hard, which means that's when they're starting to learn something," Mrs. Obama told Yahoo! Shine. "And that's the tough time to continue to make them go to that tennis lesson. Even though Malia was complaining about it, she now loves tennis. And now she's saying, 'Well, I'm glad you made me keep taking tennis.'”

In the end, the Obamas want for their kids the same things that we want for ours: A chance for them to grow into safe, responsible, and happy people.

"They're terrific girls. They're poised and they're kind and they're curious. Like any mother, I am just hoping that I don't mess them up," the first lady told Yahoo! Shine. "Even when times are tough, in the end you are as happy as your least happy child."

Just keep in mind that Obama is not a descendent of slaves.  Obama has a white mother, and his father was not a slave.  His father was a student from Kenya and did not live the slavery in America nor his ancestors.  This makes a huge difference, just think about it and try to feel the consequences of just being black without the burden of slavery.  That is the only way to learn something about Obama and triathlon.  

Our athletes come from Mexico, and we need to deconstruct History with them to have another perspective of life like Obama has. So our athletes can have a helpful History of the world and of themselves to become champions.  Derrida talks about deconstruction and that precisely what we do with our athletes. …Derrida proposed the deconstruction of all texts where binary oppositions are used in the construction of meaning and values… They need to be analyzed and criticized in all their manifestations; the function of both logical and axiological oppositions must be studied in all discourses to provide meaning and values.

Derrida states that “Deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one.” This is because deconstruction is not a mechanical operation. Derrida warns against considering deconstruction as a mechanical operation when he states that “It is true that in certain circles (university or cultural, especially in the United States) the technical and methodological “metaphor” that seems necessarily attached to the very word “deconstruction” has been able to seduce or lead astray.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

I hope you follow me.  In summary, we work too hard.