Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sledding athletes are taking their lives

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 241 posts

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#221

Post by gnramires »

matz1 wrote: post #22
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…

>pointless self-destruction and misery. Maybe its pointless for you, fair enough but it can be meaningfull for other people, i myself think it's interesting.

If it were meaningful for the athletes, they would not be taking their own lives after clearly struggling in complete misery for years; clearly even endangering lives of loved ones. You can tell most just don't understand what they signed up for.

In any case, we're rewarding and glorifying this activity. It's not just there, of course people are free to do as they please. We're making them go through this sacrifice (that clearly leaves great damage) for a reward of glory, fame or just money. If you give gold medals for it, no matter how pointless, unfulfilling and destructive it is, someone will do it. It's our responsibility.

When there are really beautiful sports out there, that players really clearly enjoy, and which are reasonably healthy (of course to an extent every activity has risks), there's simply no excuse.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#222

Post by skizm »

def_true_false wrote: post #220
skizm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working out (not including warmup/cooldown) for 90 min, 7 days per week is insane and you will be less healthy. No rest day means you'll be over trained in less than two weeks, and your workouts will get worse over time. Not only that you'll probably get injured within a month. Let's say you create a sane schedule of 3 days on, 1 day off (or similar) and you workout 2 hours per day (20 hours in 2 weeks) and let's ass…

Huh, seems I read "workout" as "generic exercise" in your previous post, but I guess you meant high intensity stuff exclusively. I'm pretty sure most athletes have stuff to do that doesn't really have this sort of limit -- like cardio or technical work.

Runners experience the same immune suppression effects as people who train HIIT: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8164529/

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#223

Post by Delk »

HappyDreamer wrote: post #210
NoOneNew wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it extremely weird when people complain that athletes should stop their sport because "it's bad for them". So is office work. 8 hours of sitting, back pain and the repetitive stress on hands causing arthritis issues isn't that much better. I'd say it's just as physically bad for people, except office work is a life unfulfilled and boring. Office work isn't exactly something you can brag about. I'd rather have…

> [office chair back pain, finger injuries] isn't that much better But this generally doesn't case suicide And can be treated, by going to the gym. (I had back, knee, elbow pain myself, from office work — and the gym, made it disappear. In my particular case) > bad knees Agreed, I'd be ok with bad knees. But when it's the brain, it's ... to some extent, the end.

That's true, but I don't think GP was referring to those special cases where the risk is to the brain, even though those are the what the linked article of course discusses.

As their parent comment said, any sport that compels you to reach for the extremes of physical human performance carries a risk of injury and wear that's obviously greater than just exercising for health and casual fitness. In most cases that's to something else in your body than your brain.

But that reaching for the limits is also what makes those sports enjoyable to some people, and nothing else might quite equal the experience.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#224

Post by bryanrasmussen »

ashtonkem wrote: post #213
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, yeah when those helmets were worn by knights in the middle ages, but many helmets nowadays have to withstand g-forces to do their job. If English was like Italian there might be a specific word for a non g-force withstanding helmet and otherwise.

Knight's helmets were actually heavily padded, with most knights wearing heavy padded linen garments over their torso, arms, and head. Nicer helmets would have a leather strap system as well. Many helmets appeared to have integral liners, although the linen has rotted away and only left the rivets where they were attached. With the advent of plate armor, offensive techniques began to focus on concussive force in orde…

It's a lucky thing that Sir Ulrich Von Liechtenstein was such a cunning champion in both the sword and joust or he might have ended up with all the brains of poor Wat.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#225

Post by viklove »

imtringued wrote: post #128
Noumenon72 wrote: post #44

This is how the world is shaping up -- winner take all, but so much competition to be that winner that the winner's life isn't worth it either.

Competition is weird. There is only one winner and the winner probably gets bored of being the best despite all the sacrifices. Meanwhile all the "losers" look up to the winner and dream of being the winner themselves. I guess it boils down to jealousy. Someone has something you don't have, it doesn't actually matter what the "something" is, it also doesn't matter if you harm yourself in the process.

That's a weird way to look at it; so negative. I think for most people it is more about pride than jealousy.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#226

Post by fuzzythinker »

elgenie wrote: post #12
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.

The issue with helmet design is likely the same one football players face: that the place the impact absorbing material needs to go is between skull and brain. There’s no wearable helmet that’s going to change the result of skull being decelerated or accelerated as the brain keeps going. A strap or some padding that absorbs fleeting contact with the ice maybe has a chance to make a difference, but there are so few pe…

Yes there is, a one-piece helmet-torso design that allows neck flexibility [1] - this is dated 2012, but I remember reading about it even before 2000. Think it will work much better for sled than American football since there should be much less sudden neck movements.

[1] https://cerebrovortex.com/2012/10/04/the-v2-prototype-footba...

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#227

Post by hannasanarion »

briefcomment wrote: post #184
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 feel like we should demonetize competitive sports. Sports are wonderful, but money (and maybe fame) incentivizes you past the point where you stop based on how your body feels. Maybe we miss out on records and storylines, but I think there are much healthier ways of spending our time.

US olympians earn an average of $16,000/year, mostly from part-time jobs that give them extra time to train. If they win gold, they get $40,000 per medal (meaning teams have to split it). Olympians are definitely not in it for the money.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#228

Post by [deleted] »

NoOneNew wrote: post #216
HappyDreamer wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it That's different from broadcasting a free soloing climbing tournament across the world, and giving rewards to the winners (survivors) "Allowing" need not meen "encouraging"

So, ban all competitions in general? That sounds like a fantastic idea... gonna solve lots of problems with that one. Football, both kinds, have lots of permanent injuries throughout the body and brain. If you want to talk about rewarding people for pushing themselves to the extreme, those are far better examples than free soloing. It's interesting when people are fine with stopping passion sports like climbing, skat…

[deleted]

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#229

Post by HappyDreamer »

NoOneNew wrote: post #216
HappyDreamer wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wanna rock climb and take the risk? We should allow it That's different from broadcasting a free soloing climbing tournament across the world, and giving rewards to the winners (survivors) "Allowing" need not meen "encouraging"

So, ban all competitions in general? That sounds like a fantastic idea... gonna solve lots of problems with that one. Football, both kinds, have lots of permanent injuries throughout the body and brain. If you want to talk about rewarding people for pushing themselves to the extreme, those are far better examples than free soloing. It's interesting when people are fine with stopping passion sports like climbing, skat…

> So, ban all competitions

I wrote "not encouraging", that's different from "ban all". Why did you reply to "ban all" instead?

I like MMA and UFC, however, the fighters get brain scanned to find out about underlying problems, and if you get knocked out, you cannot compete again for a long while (because of TBI risk).

Whilst the sledding sports seem to ignore brain injuries.

Re: Sledding athletes are taking their lives

#230

Post by watwut »

NoOneNew wrote: post #202
usgroup wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find it extremely weird when people complain that athletes should stop their sport because "it's bad for them". So is office work. 8 hours of sitting, back pain and the repetitive stress on hands causing arthritis issues isn't that much better. I'd say it's just as physically bad for people, except office work is a life unfulfilled and boring. Office work isn't exactly something you can brag about. I'd rather have…

Pointing out how it damages body should be as acceptable as pointing out too much sugar is bad for you. There is absolutely nothing weird about saying so. And also, office work is less damaging to body then top sport.

Second, general public knowing that top sport damages body influences parents, teachers and coaches decisions. When we make that topic taboo, people are more likely to push kids toward maximum performance in sport. To teach them set of values that pushes it.

When we know serious clubs can damage them, we are more likely to pick less serious clubs (which prevents future top engagement).

Post reply on HN