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Sledding athletes are taking their lives

nytimes.com

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Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#101

Post by usgroup »

gnramires wrote: post #19

This seems totally unacceptable. We should stop having this sport in the Olympics (implicitly supporting this madness) -- of course athletes are free to do as they chose, but we cannot encourage such pointless self-destruction and misery. An alternative to save the sport is completely redesign it to limit maximum accelerations. Usually injuries follow power laws so I doubt even that much reduction would be necessary…

I think the Olympics is just generally physically bad for the athletes. Runners, weightlifters, wrestlers, boxers, rowers, etc all these folks end up working so close o the edge of sustainable human tolerance and capacity that’s it’s unlikely they are not constantly going over it.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#102

Post by Markoff »

thomasz wrote: post #75
burlesona wrote: post #8

Article isn’t readable on mobile. Any link to just the text?

Can't scroll past the initial video in Firefox either. Seriously, don't fuck with scrolling.

one more reason to not use buggy broken Firefox, it works fine in outdated Kiwi browser on Android

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#103

Post by dvt »

mam2 wrote: post #70
ehnto wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used a helmet before? They don't track the heads movement very well. It's not that they lag behind or anything, they just move in completely different directions willy nilly. Even tight ones will have much sharper acceleration changes as they bounce around. I regularly wear a full face helmet with tight fitment and straps and it is moving way more than my head is. Is that notsosmart enough?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-pass_filter

Please take this dismissive Wiki-linking clap-back garbage back to reddit. I come to HN to read insightful, diverse, thought-provoking discussion. It's definitely been slipping, but it's one of the few places on the internet that at least still tries.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#104

Post by growlist »

cheeze wrote: post #84
xkcd-sucks wrote: post #14

Anecdotally, I have a friend on a national skeleton team. He says he's a bit dopey but it's okay because he has a girlfriend to take care of him, and attributes it to lateral acceleration and breathing difficulty. This is after maybe 5 years at longest

> but it's okay because he has a girlfriend to take care of him Is that okay?

Well that sentence is ambiguous. It could be that the guy on the skeleton team said the following:

"I am a bit dopey, but it's okay because I have my girlfriend to take care of me"

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#105

Post by Markoff »

topkai22 wrote: post #71
Markoff wrote: post #50

that's lot of assumptions why they are taking their lives, but I'm missing comparison with suicide rate in other sports 3 athletes in 7 years in one sport doesn't seem out of ordinary in extremely stressful environment where each millisecond counts

It's high compared to the general population. https://www.ibsf.org/en/athletes?nationality=CAN&gender=M&la... lists all make national team members going back to at least 2010. There are less than 500 national team members listed between the US and Canada. 3 deaths / (500 people *7 years) is 85 deaths per 100000 person years. The normal us rate is closer to 27. That being said, I agree it would be interesting to know…

I would be curious about explanation for cricket then.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/22/sport.ameliahill

The suicide rate among British men is 1.07 per cent, but according to Frith's research, the rate among cricketers here is 1.77 per cent - making them 75 per cent more likely to take their own life.

But the game's toll overseas is even higher. In South Africa 4.12 per cent of players take their own lives. In New Zealand the rate is 3.92 per cent and in Australia 2.75 per cent.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#106

Post by [deleted] »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #97
stareatgoats wrote: post #94

Our culture is rife with such, arenas where (mostly young) people put their life and health at risk for the merriment of the couch potatoes that make up the bulk of the public. We can't outlaw it as long as there are people who rely on it for their livelihood, and large swathes of the populace are insensitive to the sufferings of strangers to the point of enjoying it, immensely.

I don't think people would willingly sacrifice other people's life and health; it's just generally difficult to - understand long term consequences - understand risk - relate to other people's struggles - work against financial interests (as you mentioned) Given enough information we can outlaw activities, and in the case of sledding, simply taking it out of the Olympic Games would probably put an end to the sport. N…

[deleted]

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#107

Post by toyg »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

> On Feb. 22, 2013, Morris attached an accelerometer to his helmet, then launched his body down a 1,500-meter track at the sliding center in Whistler, British Columbia, which is considered the fastest track in the world and was a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Bobsleigh has been a feature of the Winter Olympics since 1924 [1]. Yet it might have taken until 2013 for someone to measure its g force on its athletes'…

> it might have taken until 2013 for someone to measure its g force

To be fair, measuring this sort of thing was pretty hard in the past, when cheap miniaturized sensors and memory didn't exist.

I expect we will see more and more activities being re-evaluated now that tech is easily wearable.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#108

Post by woah »

mam2 wrote: post #62
etrautmann wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The helmet is a light mass, which can move relative to the head, and experience drastically higher g-forces for very short times. Sampling an accelerometer at kHz rates as a helmet is vibrating (without translating all of the vibrational energy into the head), will measure larger peak G's than the head experiences. For this reason, when studying head impact for football players, they mount the accelerometers in the m…

That sounds like r/imsosmart ... a simple low pass filter would be sufficient to negate the effects you talk about

“A simple low pass filter” is a favored tool of HN commenters who know better than the experts.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#109

Post by philjohn »

WalterBright wrote: post #4

How terribly sad. Perhaps the speeds of the sled tracks could be reduced. A helmet designed to blunt the millisecond g force spikes could also be developed.

Arguably, a slower course could be made more technical, and therefore be a better test of skill over split second reactions.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#110

Post by amelius »

toyg wrote: post #107
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

> On Feb. 22, 2013, Morris attached an accelerometer to his helmet, then launched his body down a 1,500-meter track at the sliding center in Whistler, British Columbia, which is considered the fastest track in the world and was a venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Bobsleigh has been a feature of the Winter Olympics since 1924 [1]. Yet it might have taken until 2013 for someone to measure its g force on its athletes'…

> it might have taken until 2013 for someone to measure its g force To be fair, measuring this sort of thing was pretty hard in the past, when cheap miniaturized sensors and memory didn't exist. I expect we will see more and more activities being re-evaluated now that tech is easily wearable.

You could do it with a weight on a spring, and a little pen attached to the weight.
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