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

The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

holly.witteman.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–39 of 39 posts

Re: The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

#31

Post by bluepod4 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #22

Always look for counter-examples to the trend: The B lane swimmer who manages to be a nice person. The silver medalist who's genuinely pleased to have done that well.

Yeah, I saw some recent clips from women’s gymnastics for the individual all-around.

Beijing 2008: Shawn Johnson was favored to win the all-around title but came in second to Nastia Liukin. They both smiled. Maybe this is because they were on the same team and the Olympics is a “country vs country” kind of competition.

London 2012: Gabby Douglas wins the individual AA and the 2 Russian girls are in tears. They were distraught (Aly Raisman came in 4th. She didn’t smile but hugged Gabby immediately.)

Rio 2016: Simone Biles had no competition. Either way Aly Raisman was happy to place second.)

Tokyo 2020: Rebecca Andrade of Brazil appeared happy to place second to Suni Lee of the USA.

Re: The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

#32

Post by 01100011 »

Nah. As a nice B laner over my career I've seen plenty of A lane jerks. Oftentimes the people in the A lane are driven by... something that forever goes unfulfilled. I've seen a few engineering departments that are built around these types. Unhappy, but intensely dedicated to the technical details of the job and they become a keystone of the team, doing some of the most difficult architectural work because they're the only ones who dedicate the mental space to know it all. I'd say one of my strong points is being someone who can interface with these A lane types without taking it too personally. That's not to say only jerks become A lane people, just that the jerks are definitely not mostly in the B lane in my 26 years of experience.

Re: The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

#33

Post by kazinator »

B lane people are can be nice if you're some kind of stepping stone to A, rather than a competitor.

For instance, B businesses are nicer to potential customers than some A businesses, who take customers for granted (due to monopolistic power or hubris or whatever).

Re: The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

#34

Post by Bouncingsoul1 »

I was a swimmer in my childhood/youth and changed to triathlon later and thus have some datapoints still pretty much anecdotal. Basically since swimming was my best discipline, I was always put in the A lane after some time tryouts. Arriving in a new club this meant displace some other ALaner and they were not that happy usually, so i cannot see this BLane pattern.

Re: The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

#36

Post by hi_dang »

Bouncingsoul1 wrote: post #34

I was a swimmer in my childhood/youth and changed to triathlon later and thus have some datapoints still pretty much anecdotal. Basically since swimming was my best discipline, I was always put in the A lane after some time tryouts. Arriving in a new club this meant displace some other ALaner and they were not that happy usually, so i cannot see this BLane pattern.

[flagged]

Re: The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

#38

Post by AlbertCory »

bluepod4 wrote: post #31
AlbertCory wrote: post #22

Always look for counter-examples to the trend: The B lane swimmer who manages to be a nice person. The silver medalist who's genuinely pleased to have done that well.

Yeah, I saw some recent clips from women’s gymnastics for the individual all-around. Beijing 2008: Shawn Johnson was favored to win the all-around title but came in second to Nastia Liukin. They both smiled. Maybe this is because they were on the same team and the Olympics is a “country vs country” kind of competition. London 2012: Gabby Douglas wins the individual AA and the 2 Russian girls are in tears . They were…

That's a good point, actually: if you're up against Simone Biles or Missy Franklin, it's really a race for 2nd place. So it's the bronze medalist who should have an attitude.

Re: The B Lane Swimmer (2009)

#39

Post by MichaelZuo »

23090jfd wrote: post #11
buran77 wrote: post #6

When you're the best (A lane) it's easy to be magnanimous or nice. Your reward was the win and that gives you all the peace of mind needed for this. When you're the average or below average (C or D lanes) it's just as easy to be nice. Being far from the top means the competitive pressure is not as taxing and maybe even the effort is lower. In those lanes if you feel the pressure to be the best you can either become t…

I guess I'll be honest with myself and say I'm probably the equivalent of the B lane swimmer in a certain area. Some might say I'm A but maybe there's always an A lane where you're B? I guess it depends on your goals; most of life isn't reduced to a single clear metric like speed. One of the things I find frustrating in this particular area — and maybe not all areas are like this — is how much things like luck and qu…

That doesn't really contradict the post. The equivalent in the swimming world would be the A lane swimmers who are secretly doping, and would have close to no chance of making it otherwise, at best a B or C lane swimmer without.

They can still be superficially very friendly and cheerful people, almost exactly like the genuine, bonafide, A lane swimmers.

Of course if you closely examined their every thought and action for hours on end you might end up with a different conclusion, but how many of those types of situations will the average HN reader ever encounter in their lives?

For the vast majority of folks the vast majority of the time, nearly all genuine and false 'A's are indistinguishable.

Post reply on HN