Gucci Little Piggy

Kicking. Squealing.

Why I’m proud a ginger won the long jump gold medal

Anxiously awaiting a feel good piece from some Slate intern on Greg Rutherford’s surprise gold medal victory in yesterday’s long jump competition.  Rutherford, like Gabby Douglas, is opposite the skin color of the people who typically dominate his sport.  He’s also a ginger (and calls himself The Ginger Wizard) to which one of my friends suggested on Facebook meant that we’re at End Times.

Such a piece would require a redhead to write it (does Slate even have any redheads on staff?).  They’ve already published one piece on Rutherford.  Josh Levin’s headline calls Rutherford not by his name but instead “man who looks like Tintin” – a reference to an old comic character.  So we all look alike, right Levin?  I suppose a headline celebrating the victory of “Baby Oprah” in the women’s gymnastics all-around wouldn’t have gone over too well.

To borrow from Slate again, they have another piece hypothesizing why long jump distances have stagnated and declined over the past 20 years since they heyday of Mike Powell and Carl Lewis.

About these ads

11 Responses to Why I’m proud a ginger won the long jump gold medal

  1. SOBL1 08/05/2012 at 8:09 am

    The slate article on the long jump never mentions that Beamon jumped 29 ft in the thinner, elevated air of Mexico and that he broke the record by over 1 full foot, which was not touched for over 20 years. Powell and Lewis might have been super specimens. When discussing a competition that involves so few people with such a unique set of circumstances (not just a sprint or swim), it can randomly come down to who is the best at that moment.

    Chuck did you read Simmons’ article on swimming vs. gymnastics? I had to check it out as friends said his paragraph about Gabby Douglas read like every college prof I had gushing over a B+ black student.

  2. jc 08/05/2012 at 9:03 am

    Is he related to Lumpy Rutherford?

  3. Lara 08/05/2012 at 9:10 am

    Michael Phelps’s mother is a school principal and so is mine. I was rooting for him, until I decided he had won enough medals.

  4. Lara 08/05/2012 at 10:34 am

    I read the Simmons’ article and didn’t really take it that way. He likes Gabby better than the male swimmers because she is young, cute and female. He talked about how the male swimmers have great bodies and stamina and your wife or girlfriend knows that. I would have wondered about his sexuality if he seemed to like the swimmers better than the female gymnasts.

  5. The fourth doorman of the apocalypse 08/05/2012 at 11:02 am

    Perhaps improved testing for doping has been the cause of reduced long jump wining distances.

  6. Simon Grey 08/05/2012 at 3:03 pm

    I don’t see how Levin can say that Rutherford looks like Tintin. Tintin was blond and round-faced, not red-headed and rectangular-faced. The tuft of hair sticking up at the forehead is about the only similarity, but it’s a weak one at that. Anyhow, I can’t really see the point in comparing Rutherford to Tintin since a) the physical comparison is weak and b) Tintin isn’t a particularly well-known point of pop culture knowledge. I don’t understand what’s so difficult about calling a red-headed British guy a red-headed British guy.

  7. JustSayIt 08/05/2012 at 6:46 pm

    Improved drug testing is the major reason. There are many female records from the 1980s that haven’t been broken. Between 1988 and 1992 it seems testing greatly improved. Some sports still only do urine or hair testing which are not as accurate as blood testing.

  8. Nikos 08/05/2012 at 10:19 pm

    Yeah. Flo-jo’s 1988 record in the women’s 200m has not even been approached since.

    She also gained a visible amount of muscle.

    She also died very young, like 38. That is early for someone who was in great shape, as well as retired from her sport.

    Drugs for sure, sorry to say. Ben Johnson was tested and stripped, but Flo Jo was not for something even more egregious.

    Even worse, she was good looking.

  9. Dr. Grzlickson 08/06/2012 at 12:02 am

    Lara could be replaced by a spambot and the comments section would be improved.

    @Nikos
    Flo-Jo? Really?

  10. Pingback: Linkage Is Good For You – 8-12-12 | Society of Amateur Gentlemen

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: