Ranking Sports Quotes

Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive--or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.

Be a Student of the Game. Like most cliches of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. Peers who fizzle or blow up or fall down, run away, disappear from the monthly rankings, drop off the circuit.

Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I’d think how girls’ coaches were never that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world to be were young and strong and fast. To play a great game of high school basketball-it was something I myself had never done, but I could tell-made you know what it was to be alive. How much in an adult life can compare to that? Granted, there are margaritas, or there’s no homework, but there are also puffy white bagels under neon lights in the conference room, there’s waiting for the plumber, making small talk with your boring neighbor.

As a sport, most track coaches ranked ultras somewhere between competitive eating and recreational S&M.

Of course, in men’s sports no one ever talks about beauty, or grace, or the body. Men may profess their “love” of sports, but that love must always be cast and enacted in the symbology of war: elimination vs. advance, hierarchy of rank and standing, obsessive stats and technical analysis, tribal and/or nationalist fervor, uniforms, mass noise, banners, chest-thumping, face-painting, etc.

In 1924, Nikola Tesla was asked why he never married? His answer was this: "I had always thought of woman as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in her respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshipped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship. But all this was in the past. Now the soft voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies on making herself as much as possible like man - in dress, voice, and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind. The world has experience many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization. Practically all the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again. Perhaps the male in society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don't know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it - and there is striking evidence at hand that they do - then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world's history. Our civilization will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants, and other insects - a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established, the female rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme of the continuity of life. The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me." Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, page 23. August 10, 1924.

At the same time we see the phenomenon of successful women adopting the standards of men with a vengeance. Will women's march to power ascendancy, won against all odds, mean that they too will choose to flaunt their preferences for red meat, animal skin, sport hunting, and even bullfighting? As women are swelling the ranks of biomedical science, many have adopted the practice of animal experimentation. Will animal exploitation become the ultimate symbol of equality with the white male?

HIIT is so popular that it has ranked at or near the top of the annual list of worldwide fitness trends compiled by the American College of Sports Medicine, the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world.

As Trick points out, sports leagues aren’t concerned with determining the rankings as quickly and expeditiously as possible. Instead, sports calendars are explicitly designed to maintain tension throughout the season, something that has rarely been a concern of sorting theory. For

One also, in our milieu, simply didn't meet enough Americans to form an opinion. And when one did—this was in the days of crew-cuts and short-legged pants—they, too, often really did sport crew-cuts and trousers that mysteriously ended several inches short of the instep. Why was that? It obviously wasn't poverty. A colleague of my father's had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came from a place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone… ) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. There was a boy at my boarding school called Warren Powers Laird Myers, the son of an officer stationed at one of the many U.S. Air Force bases in Cambridgeshire. Trousers at The Leys School were uniform and regulation, but he still managed to show a bit of shin and to buzz-cut his hair. 'I am not a Yankee,' he informed me (he was from Norfolk, Virginia). 'I am a CON-federate.' From what I was then gleaning of the news from Dixie, this was unpromising. In our ranks we also had Jamie Auchincloss, a sprig of the Kennedy-Bouvier family that was then occupying the White House. His trousers managed to avoid covering his ankles also, though the fact that he shared a parent with Jackie Kennedy meant that anything he did was accepted as fashionable by definition. The pants of a man I'll call Mr. 'Miller,' a visiting American master who skillfully introduced me to J.D. Salinger, were also falling short of their mark. Mr. Miller's great teacher-feature was that he saw sexual imagery absolutely everywhere and was slightly too fond of pointing it out [...]. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned much earlier, the dominant images projected from the United States were of the attack-dog-and-firehose kind, with swag-bellied cops lying about themselves and the political succession changed as much by bullets as by ballots.

With all my demons, and my mum away, and dad away, and the drink and drugs, the kids, the maintenance, the keeping fit, the obsessions, the depressions, in between all that I’ve managed to win four world titles, four UKs and four Masters. I don’t know how. I’ve won 24 ranking events, 10 Premier Leagues, more than 50 tournaments altogether. It’s not bad going for such a fuck-up!

Tibetans are not famed for their perseverance. Full of enthusiasm at the start, and ready for anything new, their interest flags before long. For this reason I kept losing pupils and replacing them, which was not very satisfactory for me. The children of good families whom I taught were without exception intelligent and wide awake, and were not inferior to our children in comprehension. In the Indian schools the Tibetan pupils are ranked for intelligence with Europeans. One must remember that they have to learn the language of their teachers. In spite of that handicap, they are often at the head of the class. There was a boy from Lhasa at St. Joseph's College, at Darjeeling, who was not only the best scholar in the school, but also champion in all the games and sports.

Crowdists love “competition” of a fixed nature, where a single vector determines the winner. They do not like real life competition, including evolution, as it assesses the individual as a whole and does not simply rank individuals by ability. For this reason crowds love both sports events and free market capitalism, as each allow people to gain power according to a linear system. The more time you put into the system with the sole goal of making profit, excluding all else, the more likely it is that you can get wealth – and it can happen to anyone! That is the promise that makes crowds flock to these ideas. It is like the dream of being a rock star, or a baseball hero, or a billionaire: what makes it attractive is the idea that anyone can do it, if they simply devote themselves to a linear path of ascension – one that is controlled by the whims of the crowd. The crowd decides who is a baseball hero, or what to buy and thus who to make rich. Control without control.

When Dr. Fauci took office, America was still ranked among the world’s healthiest populations. An August 2021 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked America’s health care system dead last among industrialized nations, with the highest infant mortality and the lowest life expectancy. “If health care were an Olympic sport, the US might not qualify in a competition with other high-income nations,”56 laments the study’s lead author, Eric Schneider, who serves as Senior Vice President for Policy and Research at the Commonwealth Fund.

When Dr. Fauci took office, America was still ranked among the world’s healthiest populations. An August 2021 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked America’s health care system dead last among industrialized nations, with the highest infant mortality and the lowest life expectancy. “If health care were an Olympic sport, the US might not qualify in a competition with other high-income nations,”56 laments the study’s lead author, Eric Schneider, who serves as Senior Vice President for Policy and Research at the Commonwealth Fund. Following

When I went back and compared motivation styles to performance improvement over each athlete’s career, one factor stood out. Those who scored high in a particular type of extrinsic motivation called external regulation had lower improvement rates. External regulation is defined as when “the sport is performed not for fun but to obtain rewards (e.g., praise) or to avoid negative consequences (e.g., criticisms from parents).” The five highest-ranked athletes in external regulation were five athletes who showed the least amount of improvement.

But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren’t involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It’s precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.

Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren’t involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It’s precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself. If

The happiest thing for me about this day’s race was that I was able, on a personal level, to truly enjoy the event. The overall time I posted wasn’t anything to brag about, and I made a lot of little mistakes along the way. But I did give it my best, and I felt a nice, tangible afterglow. I also think I’ve improved in a lot of areas since the previous race, which is an important point to consider. In a triathlon the transition from one event to the next is difficult, and experience counts for everything. Through experience you learn how to compensate for your physical shortcomings. To put it another way, learning from experience is what makes the triathlon so much fun. Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren’t involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It’s precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive — or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself. If things go well, that is.

I was raised on the struggle of elders - iron collars, severed feet, the rifle of dirty Harriet, and down through the years, the Muslims and regal Malcolm. But mostly what I saw around me was rank dishonor: cable and Atari plugged into every room, juvenile parenting, niggers sporting kicks with price tags that looked like mortgage bills. The Conscious among us knew the whole race was going down, that we'd freed ourselves from slavery and Jim Crow but not the great shackling of minds. The hoppers had no picture of the larger world. We thought all our battles were homegrown and personal, but, like an evil breeze at our back, we felt invisible hands at work, like someone else was still tugging at levers and pulling strings.

Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war. The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body. Of course, in men’s sports no one ever talks about beauty or grace or the body. Men may profess their “love” of sports, but that love must always be cast and enacted in the symbology of war: elimination vs. advance, hierarchy of rank and standing, obsessive statistics, technical analysis, tribal and/or nationalist fervor, uniforms, mass noise, banners, chest-thumping, face-painting, etc. For reasons that are not well understood, war’s codes are safer for most of us than love’s." - from "Federer Both Flesh and Not

tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams have experienced losing to a male with not nearly as much notoriety as they have… in a blowout. In 1998, in a matchup against Karsten Braasch, the 203rd ranked male tennis player from Germany, Serena lost 6–1 and Venus lost 6–2. Keep in mind Serena is a 23-time Grand Champion and her sister a 7-time Grand Champion. Serena herself said, “I hit shots that would have been winners on the women’s Tour, and he got to them easily.” Is it a good time to mention at the time Braasch was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and smoked during changeovers the day of the match? He also admitted to playing a round of golf and drinking a few cocktails before facing the Williams sisters as well as performing like “a guy ranked 600th.” Thirteen years later, in an interview with David Letterman, Serena noted she would lose to Andy Murray 6–0 in just a matter of minutes. She went as far to say men and women’s tennis is a totally different sport. Serena told Letterman, “I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls because I don’t want to be embarrassed.

Many a time when I sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars. These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee’s thoughtful majesty of face lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel for this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love. Is it that, among the race I belong to, man’s pride so far influences his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me with her preference?

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17

Unlike the rankings published for most sports, the chess rating system is extremely accurate; for practical purposes, your rating is a nearly perfect indicator of your ability.

Be a Student of the Game. Like most clichés of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. Peers who fizzle or blow up or fall down, run away, disappear from the monthly rankings, drop off the circuit. E.T.A. peers waiting for deLint to knock quietly at their door and ask to chat. Opponents. It’s all educational. How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This is why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary. See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself what you hope will not return. This is your body. They want you to know. You will have it with you always. On this issue there is no counsel; you must make your best guess. For myself, I do not expect ever really to know. But in the interval, if it is an interval: here is Motrin for your joints, Noxzema for your burn, Lemon Pledge if you prefer nausea to burn, Contracol for your back, benzoin for your hands, Epsom salts and anti-inflammatories for your ankle, and extracurriculars for your folks, who just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss anything they got.

Who's the greatest center of all time, Wilt Chamberlain or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Where does Shaquille O'Neal land in the rankings? Would you pick Tim Duncan or Charles Barkley as the better power forward? Who's your best Sixth Man? Where does LeBron James rank among small forwards?

There are several advanced classes in the university of liars. Golfers and fishermen rank very high in the sporting grades,

FATHER OF THE BOY SCOUTS Arthur Conan Doyle was knighted, and not for the merits of Sherlock Holmes. The writer was invited to join the ranks of the nobility as thanks for the propaganda he wrote for the imperial cause. One of his heroes was Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts. They met while fighting savages in Africa: “There was always something of the sportsman in his keen appreciation of war,” Sir Arthur said. Gifted in the art of following the tracks of others and erasing his own, Baden-Powell was a great success at the sport of hunting lions, boars, deer, Zulus, Ashantis, and Ndebeles. Against the Ndebeles, he fought a rough battle in southern Africa. Two hundred and nine blacks and one Englishman died. The colonel took as a souvenir the horn the enemy blew to sound the alarm. And that spiral-shaped horn from a kudu antelope was incorporated into Boy Scout ritual as the symbol of boys who love nature.

The winner of that particular honor is an algorithm called Comparison Counting Sort. In this algorithm, each item is compared to all the others, generating a tally of how many items it is bigger than. This number can then be used directly as the item’s rank. Since it compares all pairs, Comparison Counting Sort is a quadratic-time algorithm, like Bubble Sort. Thus it’s not a popular choice in traditional computer science applications, but it’s exceptionally fault-tolerant. This algorithm’s workings should sound familiar. Comparison Counting Sort operates exactly like a Round-Robin tournament. In other words, it strongly resembles a sports team’s regular season—playing every other team in the division and building up a win-loss record by which they are ranked. That Comparison Counting Sort is the single most robust sorting algorithm known, quadratic or better, should offer something very specific to sports fans: if your team doesn’t make the playoffs, don’t whine. The Mergesort postseason is chancy, but the Comparison Counting regular season is not; championship rings aren’t robust, but divisional standings are literally as robust as it gets. Put differently, if your team is eliminated early in the postseason, it’s tough luck. But if your team fails to get to the postseason, it’s tough truth. You may get sports-bar sympathy from your fellow disappointed fans, but you won’t get any from a computer scientist.

his 1999–2000 season (24–7–9, 153 steals, 45 percent FG, 82 games, 3,425 minutes) ranks in the pantheon of Greatest Point Guard Seasons Ever …

Create a list of all the important areas of your life right now. The list might include sport, study, work, family, and friends. Next, rank each of these spheres in terms of personal importance, time spent on each.

The video game industry is now larger than sports or films, and a 2020 study found that 68 percent of male Gen Zers considered gaming a key ingredient of their identity.

In the fourteenth-century romance Perceforest,6 we find the sprite Zephyr, who introduces himself as a sort of demon: “I am one of the angels that stumbled with Lucifer,” a kind of fallen angel with a fairly high rank in the hierarchy of spirits. He possesses a body and the gift of metamorphosis. We generally encounter him in the guise of an old man wearing a robe of black homespun fabric, but when sporting with humans he also assumes the shape of a donkey, a stag, or a bear, as well as that of a beautiful young girl who, once embraced, turns into a horrible old crone. He also has the power to transport himself wherever he wishes to be. He is malicious, teasing, affectionate, and cheerful, and the tricks he plays are not wickedly intended. Zephyr never loses sight of his friends’ interests. He helps them, transports them, frees them, and is generous with his offers of excellent advice. Two words characterize his nature: transformation and pranks.

Leadership Leadership has a lot more to it than simply telling people what to do, keeping track of efforts, penalizing those who are late or who disrupt, and hiring / firing. Great leaders are also great workers with a level of competence and confidence learned on the job that others accept and are willing to follow. These leaders are good at working with themselves, they have developed discipline, an ability to delay gratification, curiosity as to why people think or do things the way they do, and are open minded and accepting of change. Just look at any sports team, military unit or successful company and you will read or hear about all the leaders that make up the company. Most frequently these leaders are not the ones with a title, but the ones who make the place run through their efforts, focus, determination and ability to overcome obstacles. It is from these ranks that titles are granted and rewards given. These people have proven that they can lead by example, are able to shoulder the load and have what it takes to lead others, helping them grow just as they were helped on their way. My book entitled YOU Working With YOU is all about you, helping you to become the leader that you are capable of becoming. Just showing up to work might keep you employed, stepping up and leading by example is what others will notice and align with.

This might sound extreme, perhaps even a little deranged, but I don’t think you can make it to the very top rank in any sport if you don’t have a similar aversion to losing—a visceral, physical loathing. I look for this trait in an athlete, although the hatred of losing has to be balanced by a certain degree of realism, an ability to step back just enough so that you can process your disappointing performance and learn from it.

Interagency cooperation was all well and good, but it was understood to be the sport of the aristocracy; rank-and-file workers like Jacob were expected to keep to their own kind.

Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? It's precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive--or at least a partial sense of it. Your quality of experience is based not on standards such as time or ranking, but on finally awakening to an awareness of the fluidity within action itself.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

The Comanche rode in a wide circle around the frightened, riderless horses and tossed Amy into the arms of a fellow Indian who waited in the ranks. The little girl’s indignant screeching filled the air. Loretta lifted the Spencer carbine to her shoulder, leveling the sights on the Comanche as he circled back to her. The bells on his moccasins tinkled merrily with each movement of his horse. “Let me go!” Amy screamed. “You stinkin’ savage.” Loretta glanced toward the child. A young brave struggled to keep Amy atop his pony. He laughed uproariously when she tried to scratch him. The girl caught a handful of his black hair and pulled with all her might. “Ai-ee!” the boy exclaimed. “She tries to take my scalp.” Whoops of laughter spiraled among the men. Loretta dragged her gaze back to Hunter. He had halted his mount some fifteen feet from her. “Where will you spend your cartridge?” he asked. “If you love her, shoot her. It is wisdom.” Amy’s screaming turned to pitiful sobbing. Loretta’s aim wavered, and she glanced toward the other Indians, trying to see her cousin. What was Henry doing? Why didn’t he back her up? How long could it take to load a rifle? The miserable coward. “You have time for one shot,” Hunter went on. “If you waste it on me, my friend will take your sister and avenge me. Your father hides behind his wooden walls. You stand alone.” Sweat ran into Loretta’s eyes. She turned slightly and leveled the barrel of her gun at Amy. Blinking, she snugged her finger around the trigger. Tears sprang to her eyes as she recalled Amy’s queries about blessed release. It’s something bad, isn’t it? It’s killing yourself, isn’t it? Not always, Loretta thought. Sometimes it was death by a loved one’s hand. “Think long on this, Yellow Hair,” Hunter cautioned. “I came in peace to buy a woman, not steal a child. She is too skinny to bring this Comanche pleasure. You are not.” He leaned forward, stretching an arm along his horse’s neck, his hand open to her. “Come to me, and I will send your sister back to her mother unharmed.” Loretta stared at him. Did he mean it? His eyes pierced hers. The scar on the side of his face flickered as his jaw muscle tightened. If the tales about him were true, he might spare Amy. On the other hand, he might take them both captive if given half a chance. She remembered how gently he had touched her last night, and her confusion mounted. “Drop the weapon and come,” he urged. “It is a fair trade, no? She goes free. I have spoken it.” In the background, Loretta heard laughter ringing. Already the braves made sport of Amy. The child screeched again. “You will do this, no? You have courage. It shines in your eyes. If you fight the big fight, you cannot win. It is best to hold the head high and surrender with dignity. Put down the gun.

Self-esteem” doesn’t exist in the Chinese lexicon, at least not in the way Americans use it. In China, a child’s regard for herself is rarely as important as a stark evaluation of performance. Almost as if childhood were an Olympic sport, the Chinese rank children on everything from work ethic to Chinese character recognition and musical skill.

Smart practice always includes a feedback loop that lets you recognize errors and correct them - which is why dancers use mirrors. Ideally that feedback comes from someone with an expert eye - and so every world-class sports champion has a coach. If you practice without such feedback, you don't get to the top ranks.

Smart practice always includes a feedback loop that lets you recognize errors and correct them - which is why dancers use mirrors. Ideally that feedback comes from someone with an expert eye - and so every world-class sports champion has a coach. If you practice without such feedback, you don't get to the top ranks. The feedback matters and the concentration does, too - not just the hours.

to one rare and prescient German observer, writing in 1913, it was obviously mere prelude. ‘The Olympic Games are a war, a real war. You can be sure that many participants are willing to offer – without hesitation – several years of their life for a victory of the fatherlands . . . The Olympic idea of the modern era has given us a symbol of world war which does not show its military character very openly, but – for those who can read sports statistics – it gives us enough insight into world ranking.

Many Russians throw their KBs around non-competitively, just for health. Vasiliy Kubanov, from a village in the Kirovograd area, underwent a very complex digestive tract surgery at twenty-nine years of age. He was in such rough shape that the Soviet government, not famous for being too nice to anyone, offered to put him on disability. Vasiliy refused, started exercising with dumbbells and finally kettlebells, and even earned his national ranking four years after his surgery! So powerful was the girevoy sport’s effect on Kubanov’s life that he ended up getting the job of a physical education instructor at his collective farm.

Jiu Jitsu Woman is a resource and community for women in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. We write articles, guides, and how-to's specifically so women don't have to feel alone in this male dominated sport. Our Women's Club is a subscription group for women who want to hear from the top ranking female BJJ athletes. Every month we have interviews with top ranking female athletes hearing their stories on gender dramas, frustrations, and tips on how they function in such a male dominated industry. We also ask practical questions on how women prepare for tournaments and competitions, and we even talk to men to find out the other sides perspective.

Kill One, Skip One The beer garden was crowded with people in rumpled sport shirts and slacks and cool cotton dresses. It was hot, smoky, wet and rank with the odor of beer, turgidly alive with sluggish conversation and the rasping of a juke box. I bought a beer at the bar and asked if Baxter Osgood was around.

The significance of shared arousal was demonstrated in an ingenious experiment designed by researcher Joshua Conrad Jackson and published in the journal Scientific Reports in 2018. Jackson and his colleagues set out “to simulate conditions found in actual marching rituals”—which, they noted, “required the use of a larger venue than a traditional psychology laboratory.” They chose as the setting for their study a professional sports stadium, with a high-definition camera mounted twenty-five meters above the action. After gathering 172 participants in the stadium and dividing them into groups, the experimenters manipulated their experience of both synchrony and arousal: one group was directed to walk with their fellow members in rank formation, while a second group walked in a loose and uncoordinated fashion; a third group speed-walked around the stadium, boosting their physiological arousal, while a fourth group strolled at a leisurely pace. Jackson and his collaborators then had each group engage in the same set of activities, asking them to gather themselves into cliques, to disperse themselves as they wished across the stadium’s playing field, and finally to cooperate in a joint task (collecting five hundred metal washers scattered across the field). The result: when participants had synchronized with one another, and when they had experienced arousal together, they then behaved in a distinctive way—forming more inclusive groups, standing closer to one another, and working together more efficiently (observations made possible by analyzing footage recorded by the roof-mounted camera). The findings suggest that “behavioral synchrony and shared physiological arousal in small groups independently increase social cohesion and cooperation,” the researchers write; they help us understand “why synchrony and arousal often co-occur in rituals around the world.

Many people born into modest circumstances have risen to great heights because they could educate themselves for free, and stay out of trouble, at the public library. To cite one example, Tom Bradley, the son of a sharecropper, learned enough at the local library as a boy to join the Los Angeles Police Department. He rose to become its highest ranking black officer in 1958 when he made lieutenant. Bradley went on to be mayor for two decades. But today library hours, as well as budgets to buy books, have been slashed in Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore, and other cities, yet there is plenty of money to give away to sports-team owners.

Can you be totally intrinsically motivated? “Not necessarily, it’s not always black and white,” says Brad Feld, partner at the Boulder, Colorado-based venture capital firm Foundry Group. I consider Brad a good friend and an expert at understanding the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I met Brad through a good friend, Bing Gordon, the founder of EA Sports, and we quickly became friends. As he explains, “People fall along a continuum.” Brad uses tennis star Rafael Nadal as an example. He sees Nadal as having a blend of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Nadal clearly likes to win. He likes the limelight and the attention he gets. “Yet . . . Nadal, after he loses a match, he’s a very gracious loser, acknowledging that the other guy played better and did an awesome job,” Brad explained to me. Nadal recharges his battery by heading off to the beach, and then he is back in training for the next tournament. His daily training regime includes four hours of playing tennis on court, two and a half hours in the gym, and a strict stretching routine. He’s continued this training whether he is ranked at number one, five, or seven in the world. It’s for him, not for the ranking. Brad also believes something I’ve really taken to heart—that one person can’t truly motivate another person, a concept especially important in business when you manage people. “I can’t motivate another person, but [I can] create a context in which they are motivated, and part of being a leader is to understand what motivates other people,” explained Brad. “So if I’m the leader of an organization that you’re a part of, I have to understand what motivates you. Then I can create a context in which to motivate you. Most people struggle to understand how somebody else is motivated because they do it based on what motivates them.” Brad’s words ring true: While my own inspiration has come from various people, none of them actually motivated me. When I was extrinsically motivated, it was based largely on what others thought about me. My inner desire to win was based on extrinsic rewards. Only I had the power to change that.

Holy-Center-Approaching is soon to be the number one Zonal pastime. Its balmy heyday is nearly on it. Soon more champions, adepts, magicians of all ranks and orders will be in the field than ever before in the history of the game. The sun will rule all enterprise, if it be honest and sporting. The Gauss curve will herniate toward the excellent. And tankers the likes of Närrisch and Slothrop here will have already been weeded out.

We live together in the amphitheatre of high-performing sport. We love. We hate. We contest. We cuddle. But this here is street-level. We’re just two blokes jostling for power. I didn’t think I wanted the rank. I’ve been his beloved underling for eight years. He’s shared everything with me: his captaincy, his family life, and even, fuck, his wife. But in the last 20 minutes, I’ve taken over from him without consultation, almost without a thought. I just took the lightsabre out of his hand. I may as well have taken his number-five jumper and burned it on the cross, too. Jerome Kremers, book 2, TEAM PURSUIT

Equal parts jealous and appalled, fans of rival clubs who saw hapless City catapult literally overnight into the ranks of world soccer royalty wasted no time in ripping the team for abandoning its roots. “You’re not City, you’re not City, you’re not City anymore” went the song from opposing fans. A few City supporters agreed. Some even mailed back their season tickets.

Right’ was not how I would describe the AFL’s decision to play our final against Geelong at Skilled Stadium. It had always been our understanding that the venue for finals should be the best available stadium, in the home state of the higher-ranked team. But apparently this was a guideline rather than a rule and the AFL, no stranger to running an agenda that suited their objectives, decided the match would earn more revenue played in Geelong. I found this incredibly disrespectful to Fremantle. It was inappropriate, it was arrogant, it was flawed. Internally, we were seething but focused. Externally, we stuck by our ‘anywhere, anytime’ mantra, and vowed to make the best of the situation.

If you look at a sample group of precocious youth who have been exposed to a sport around the same time and have worked equally hard, there is no cogent explanation for the difference in their results other than the superior competence of a few in a certain domain or skill set, or what we call ‘aptitude’. Talent makes itself seen – you can tell from the feverish pace at which some pick up a certain subject, while others take much longer to wrap their heads around it – before hard work takes over. Quite often, we come across two players who’ve spent their entire lives playing a sport and have risen through the ranks. For one of them success flows easily, almost effortlessly, while the other may have a more laboured progress. But when the latter hits a bend and begins to play well, I don’t ascribe the turnaround to discipline alone – I believe they are actually tapping into a pre-existing resource. In general, though, a person who’s working hard and doing all the right things will invariably pull ahead of someone who may be talented but is not putting in as much effort.