News 2. from NZ

I will continue on education and “money” from New Zealand.   We go to a swimming pool where they have classes for toddlers, www.theolympic.co.nz . 

The oldest swimming pool in New Zealand (1940) underwent many changes over the years; there are no more stairs for watchers and a roof is in place to use it 12 months a year.  While training there, we found a copy of an article written by Victoria Robinson; it was at the pool board. The article does not say the date or the name of the newspaper.  It was a photocopy that brings a educational dilemma; specifically, the education for triathletes who perform at the highest level.  It discusses the guidelines on education for the UK where it said that toddler should “exercise” at least three hours a day.  In the article, it is also mentioned that the guidelines are similar to the ones implemented by Australia in 2009.  The Minister of Health was behind this proposition to institute in New Zealand.

Wednesday 24, 10am school kayak practice in NZ North Shore

According to the newspaper article, the professor interviewed, Lisette Burrows from Otago University said: “With these sorts of recommendations it´s just another thing for parents to worry about and do.  They´re not only being parents and nutritionists, now they´re become play specialists or fitness facilitators.”  THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT WE NEED IF WE WANT TO HAVE CHAMPIONS.  There is no short-cut.   Parents, and I am assuming that Lisette is a mother, do not take full responsibility for being parents.  We have to learn to be an expert parent over the years which it covers all what Lisette says.  If we want to have “good” citizens we have to do our job as parents.  One sixth of the national budget goes to health in the USA, and they are unable to cover the population.  The vast majority of the problems related to being overweight and sedentary.  If we look around the triathletes’ population, the top triathletes have been actives for years and many hours a day since childhood, and they do not have “traumas” we could see as dangerous.   The problem should be how to do the teaching and not giving up on it, that makes all the difference.  

A public school in NZ 

This problem is not just in New Zealand. It is all over the world and that is why we are running out of “excellent” athletes. No wander Paul Bergen said: “Horses do not have parents,” when speaking about training horses versus human beings.  “Our best athletes come from Siberia,” told me once Gennadi Touretski, “they have to dig holes in the snow to come out of their houses during the winter time.”  Our best marathon runners started working as children; Germán Silva, twice New York marathon winner, used to sell oranges carrying them on the head in his native town.  He trains Kenyans and practices ironman nowadays.  Juan Martínez cut alfalfa when a child working in the family land.

I was surprised that a politician, the Health Minister, was behind this initiative that appeared “unpopular” to say the least.  GO for it KIWIS!

New Zealand World Championship

 Recounting Damages:

 Two Podiums, One Top Nine Junior Elite.

A day before the race, after the organizer mentioned that drafting was not permitted and 10 meters between each cyclist was just accepted.  I said to Yosua and Armando: “Be careful, you look like Mexicans and anything that looks like you are drafting the judge will punish you.”  There is no way out of it.  It is better to lose a few meters than the race.  Well, it happened, Yosua was punished with two minutes penalty and lost the podium.  He ended up fourth but we considered that he at least won the second place, or perhaps he could lose the first place.  Yosua was punished because “he took advantage of drafting going downhill before an intersection.”  This is another thing to encounter when practicing sports, judges that do not know the in and out of the sport.  That is why I do not believe in “appreciative” sports.

Armando made his move with himself and won the second place in the 20-24 category, he is just 19.  He lost for 4 seconds.  This is the way they grow up in our team.  It is not step by step but a real conquest of their fears to have a breakthrough.  Fear of being different, fear of losing cultural benchmarks are things to overcome mediocrity in Mexico.

THE JUNIOR ELITE CATEGORY WAS A REAL FEAST.  The conditions were horrible to say the least; it was cold, 14 degrees outside as well as the water temperature.  Eduardo mentioned: “it was a matter of staying on the bike; I saw some crashes.  But the majority of the triathletes that did not finish was because they could not keep up with the speed of going uphill during the race.  We lost a Mexican teammate because the hill was too hard for him.”  The rain existed since the beginning of the race but it worsened during the bicycle part and the running part.  “There were moments when we were spinning on the air while passing through the blue carpet.” Eduardo mentioned.  Eduardo has one more year to go in this category.  

Preparing for the race took us ten years, and the details for the race a year.  That is how we see the process of a team.

Ver resultados en triathlon.org
junior elite
sprint 20-24 años
olímpico 20-24 años.

WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NEW ZEALAND

News

I always tell athletes, give me the “meat and bread” of the information so we can make the best decision we can.  And the news will always come down to money.  In New Zealand there have been a discussion regarding what to do with the elderly in fifteen years from now.  Right now they are supported by 4.5 working people but it will come to 2.4 in fifty years and the income is becoming smaller.  How much money should go to the elderly because the cost of illness and disease is increasing due to lack of heat, electricity and humidity in their houses?  The cost of electricity for the houses has increased substantially and it needs to be considered as a major player in the budget for most of the houses.  What does it have to do with triathlon?  A lot.  I read someplace that when Bevan Docherty left New Zealand, he had 200 dollars in his pocket to survive Europe; he was “lucky.”  Even if you are good, you need to plan.  He found somebody who helped him with a half-paid job as a domestic riding for a local team.  Our athletes need good price money because they deserve much more than any other sport; and they don´t get it if the country, the city and the like are “broke.”

 

 

They are ready to compete and win; if nobody else is better prepared than them.

TRIATHLON EDUCATION AND DIVERSITY

I heard that somebody asked if the population of Jamaica was black 100%, and the one who answered said it was 100% White.  He was referring to being treated equal and having a homogeneous population. Something little similar to "black boy" in William Blake´s poem:

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

Blackness is not in the color of skin. It is in the way we think, we act, we behave, and it depends on our believe system, etc.  I had Rastafarian patients and got to know something about Jamaica without visiting.  Not as good as the Russian who broke the Maya Code and imagined the Yucatan Peninsula and said that it was as he thought it was when visiting. 

“Michael Coe: The least likely person one would ever have thought to have made the greatest of all breakthroughs in the Maya decipherment was a Soviet citizen, Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov, who was born in the Ukraine of Russian parents, spent most of his youthful years once he got beyond adolescence in the Russian Army. He was a Russian officer finally, he was an artillery spotter for the Red Army in the final assault on Germany from the east and he entered Berlin during the fall of Berlin, I mean horrific battles, survived, and in the ruins-- this is the story he told me once although I’ve heard different stories -- in the ruins of the National Library in Berlin -- he found a book lying there that had survived the fires and all the rest of it that he picked up, which was a very good black and white reproduction of the three then known codices: the Dresden, the Madrid Codex and the one in Paris, that had been done by the Villacortes, father and son, very good pair of scholars, in Guatemala back in the 1930s…What Knorosov showed was that some of the glyphs that are in there can be recognized in Landa’s so called ABC and he applied those glyphs and using a dictionary of the Yucatec Maya language he was able to read it phonetically as a syllabary. He published his findings in a Soviet journal called Sovyetska Ethnographica, Soviet Ethnography, in 1952…”

http://www.nightfirefilms.org/breakingthemayacode/interviews/CoeTRANSCRIPT.pdf

Do we have diversity in triathlon? No really, you “need” to have a way of thinking that is considered “white” to be at the top 50, or a great family (structure) to keep you there.  As I said on previous post, “liars can win too.”  I learned it over the years, when I lived in the USA understood how “coconut” I was (perhaps not politically correct now).  Then I realized that you need that white structure to get far competing in triathlon at a high level.  Sleep the hours needed, get up early to start your day, eat properly and when scheduled, program your day, months and years; learn to save your money to compete right; learn to relax because you will have many difficulties in life and when competing (do not throw you helmet as in Football).  Nobody is going to help you with the above, you need to learn it very early in life and appropriate it.  Otherwise, you are not going to make it.

We are departing for the Worlds tomorrow.  Wish us good luck!  We believe very little on luck but we like the expression.

THANK YOU TEAM OAXACA!

Maye and Pedro,

Gloria (pilates), María José and family Fabila and Sainz, 

Santillán-Franco Family,

Marva (weekend ''paseos'')

Magui, the ''boys,'' 

and Marcela Cruz Ruiz Sanut Clinic!

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT AND HELP.

TRIATHLON EDUCATION V. Lying

We have spoken about the difficulties when growing up children and even more difficult to create champions.  A huge issue is when facing what I call the Denial of Saint Peter. 

Août 2012 Triathlon and the Denial of Saint Peter in this blog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter

Denial of Jesus by Peter

Main article: Denial of Peter

All four canonical gospels recount that, during the Last Supper, Jesus foretold that Peter would deny him three times before the following cockcrow ("before the cock crows twice" in Mark's account).

Most of the athletes and people in general do not want to face reality and start to “lie” to continue living and preparing for next day.  In order to be a champion this is a no-no.  We can postpone interventions or actions, but  not allowing lying to one self is the main benchmark of a champion.  I tell my athletes and patients: “The last thing you should do is to lie to yourself because that is being really crazy and it has no end.”  Our great Jacques Lacan used to say: “Love, love, love, that is why we invented the unconscious.”  He was too French to say that, that is why we lie to ourselves.  But it is not only love why we lie to ourselves. Nowadays, fear and laziness are the main reasons.  Of course, by definition, plain psychopaths do that.

It is incredible listening to Floyd Landis lying. Fortunately, he is facing the ICU for defamation.

http://www.insidethegames.biz/sports/summer/cycling/1011161-uci-wins-court-case-against-landis-following-armstrong-allegations

 

I wandered how much he had to lie to himself when growing up to get to his point.  It is scary to know how much lying has happened in cycling to get to this point.  But let´s speak about the Freudian lying, the one call unconscious lying.  My teacher Tom Szasz used to say: “I do not know who is more of a liar in the case of the patients and doctors; the patient, or who believes the lies of the patient.”  I will go beyond this. “It does not matter if it is unconscious or conscious we create the same damage.”  The last year Floyd competed, he was in Mexico with Rock Racing and we went to see the cycling teams downtown, to see Armstrong in particular.  Armstrong left without touching the dinner (it was too late).  A local bartender asked us about somebody passing by, it was Floyd.  He said: “He stayed all night long chasing girls in the bar.”  Floyd did not finish the race.  Big lies like the ones seen with Floyd come many years after “Freudian unconscious lies,” but they started in childhood.

But let´s continue with this Freudian-Lacanian lies.  By the way, Lacan separated from Freud to develop a totally different theory but he had the concept of unconscious.  WE WORK EVERYDAY WITH OUR KIDS TO STOP LIES AT ALL COST.  We spend our lives creating champions and we know that not lying is a Sine qua non of a champion.  If we get liars to become champions it is because the system supports to the maximum the individual and he/she is able to survive because of the system (family, organization, team, etc.).  As it was the case of Floyd. The younger the kid, the work is on his/her belief system to influence a reality oriented life.  Otherwise, the Freudian-Lacanian lies start to flourish.

 

Working on the belief system of a kid is exciting and rewarding, but sometimes we also lie to ourselves at times.  We believe that they are actually learning or are on the same page, but we do not want to see the signs that tell us the opposite.  So, in order to teach we need to be as free as possible of lies, ourselves.