Joyous Danger: Winter Olympics--Speed and Flying

The Winter Olympics offer more danger than the summer Olympics—not from terrorists, but from friction coefficients. This danger couples with the joy from speed and height that organically grows from the lowered kinetic friction enabled by ice, snow and inclines. All the unique danger and joy derives from the drag coefficients enabled by playing on ice and snow.

The danger to athletes does not come from explosive mass+force collisions as in American football; nor does it arise from torque that plagues knee or ACL destruction in soccer or basketball.

Cold and heights lie behind it all. Cold permits ice and snow while mountains permit incline and speed. Combine these with launches and jumps and the Winter Olympics provide spectacles of race an speed, and beauty and air borne distance and play. All the sports depend upon the low drag coefficients permitted by ice and air. Nothing close exists in the earth bound sports of the summer Olympics.

Let’s start with flying.

People fly in the winter Olympics.

How cool is that? People fly, sometimes it is only for .5 seconds in ice skating to 6-7 seconds in ski jump to a series of explosive aerobatic jumps and airborne gymnastics in the half pipe or slopestyle.

The combination of inclines plus the speed and power permitted by ice and snow enable men and women to launch themselves into the air. In ski jumps they push off and head down inclines reaching speeds of 60 miles per hour, then head into the air, battle the wind and cold and visibility and snow to find perfect aerodynamic positioning and soar. Airborne skiers project a serene beauty that hides the continuous micro-management of their body and core to adapt to the wind, snow and other winter surprises.

Then they land. The landing involves endless adjustments to avoid crashing into snow, spiraling out of control or destroying ankles and knees.

Skiers fly soar through the air getting as aerodynamic as possible to maximize distance. Every scintilla of friction is fought from weight to the ultra-sleek and space age materials of their uniforms. Everything is designed to maximize force and lift and flight.  Skiers concentrated upon achieving a perfect balance of power push, launch and aerodynamic position as well as weight shift to maximize the distance they could achieve in 2-4 seconds. It was magnificent and inspiring and sometimes felt a bit boring, although spectators did not see the endless accommodations to wind and sight and snow required to maintain that form in the air.

Snow boarders changed all this. Born on snow play grounds, they pushed and played and discovered how being freed from the ground coupled with the launch coefficients of snow released them to play in the air—three  dimensional play. Only for seconds, even microseconds, but they experimented with moving their bodies, flipping their bodies and boards, twisting turning. Much like dunks on a playground they challenged each other and tested the limits of their bodies in the air on slopes unfettered by rules and norms and forms. Friction and drag coefficients in the air are different and permit wide and wild variations as well as pushing board and ski developers to maximize launch speeds, aerodynamic and landing stability.

The boards maximize time in the air both with the advantages of momentum in the launch but also the distance travelled horizontally so the “hang time” far surpasses anything earth bound and earth launched athletes can achieve. The half pipe maximizes these advantages and permits multiple points of launch and landing to build momentum but also the new or innovate spins, flips and twirls. The sport feels like a cross between ballet and gymnastics driven by thrust and imagination.

Skiing now emulates snow boarding with free skiing and both sports permit the energy and lift of boards to serve as platforms for experiments in motion in space. All push boundaries and create much higher dangers for those who fall or land from a distance where a boarder is doing three full body rotations in the air. Crashes carry far more force and vulnerability given the three-dimensional poses struck as well as the sheer impact falling from height.

In addition the ice and incline on mountains permits a natural based, albeit groomed, challenge not available in non-winter sports. The speed permitted by snow and ice sking especially when coupled with thoughtful ski design and immense training regimes permits Alpine skiers to reach speeds of 70 to 90 miles per hour on the slaloms far surpassing anything possible with earth bound friction coefficients.

The courses are laid out with tight or wide curves and gates and moguls depending upon the slope, but they require immense discipline and speed. It is not unusual for one third of the field to not finish the race. The crashes and spills can lead to terrifying spirals out of control with horrible injuries for participants. It sometimes feels like a NASCAR run waiting for a crash.

Being in the air lowers friction and generates greater speed and height from which to move one’s body. It also creates a three-dimensional world in which to act. Unlike the very time limited world of gymnastics, the snow boarders perfected art of launching into the air and then spinning, touching, twisting and flipping as they moved forward. They deployed momentum and energy and low friction coefficients. In the air vertical and horizontal distance combine to maximize hang time. The combination of moving forward and kinetic energy but also movement, board construction and use of one’s body and ski or board for lift offers unique challenges and opportunities.

Even land-bound actions get huge lifts from the reduced drag of ice. A skater can experience up to 3 to 4 G force on his or her body during a spin. Angular momentum generated by ice speed permit ice skaters to press dangerous and beautify boundaries of shape and speed. Ice dancers possess the same capacity to integrate angular momentum with beauty and form combined with the speed and momentum of tosses and leaps.

The last reason I enjoy the winter Olympics is that they give nature a much strong say in the challenge. The quality of snow on trails and jumps differs from day to day and hour to hour given sun and temperature and wind. The wind at higher altitudes demands far greater thought and adaptation when a person is soaring at 60 miles per hour or moving in fog and snow at 90 miles per hour. Snow bedevils and blinds and dare athletes under all the conditions. Wind, snow, snow conditions and nature extract a cost and surprise from folks. 

As in the beginning nature has her say in winter Olympics like no where else. Yet the athletes defy and work with nature for speed, and danger and flight as in no other competitions.

Olympic Virtues

The 2010 Winter Olympics ended on Sunday. I'll miss them even as I understand that the power of the Olympics derives from the fact that they occur once very four years. Only once every four years do athletes journey from the five continents of the five rings to gather together. Only once every four years does such an array of talent across such a diversity of sport arrive, live and compete together. Only once every four years can the sheer talent, power and beauty of athletics rise above the commercialism, communalism, jingoism and egoism that swirls around it. The raw imprint of the images of performance seer through the chaff and capture why the ancient Greeks enshrined athletics at the center of their achievements and art and why they believed that the human body reflected and perfected the human mind.

For the Greeks athletic achievement and the development of body and mind reflected virtue. For them it represented the highest form of moral life. Virtue arose from practice and refinement of a way of being in the world; it grew from building habits of thought and focus and disciplined learning of how to approach situations, judge them and act in a manner consistent with virtue.

The opposite of virtue consisted of weakness of will. The weakness emerged from both the failure of judgment, of an inability to see and comprehend the stakes in a situation. This failure of judgment was compounded by the inability to follow through on action. Even if the individual knew the right action, he or she could find the emotional and executive willingness to act in a manner consistent with what their judgment directed.

The Olympics illuminated powerful virtues that lies at the center of athletics. Let me mention a few.

Courage and Fortitude: The athletes competed in sports that require them to face considerable physical and mental challenges. More than a few of the sports courted significant physical danger. The athletes know the risks and many of them, at this elite level, probably all of them, have struggled through physical and emotional adversity and grappled with facing and carrying on in the face of failure.

Faith and Sacrifice:  The athletes believe. They see a possibility for themselves. This vision inspires them and gives them the energy to sacrifice time and opportunity to master the craft of their sport. They give up personal lives and personal pleasures and personal interests to pursue with a single minded devotion the vision of achievement. They practice and practice and practice and condition and condition and condition forgoing many other aspects of life. This discipline and sacrifice is infused with their faith in themselves and their sport and their goals.

Perseverance and Conscientiousness: Elite athletes arrive at their success through a path of failure and learning. One striking fact about many of the athletes was how many of those who succeeded were attending their second or third Olympics. While age ultimately robs athletes of the range of talent, energy and physical, Olympic competition requires robust experience and tempered mastery of the emotional and cognitive discipline of not  choking or losing focus under the pressure of visibility and competition. At this level micro seconds matter in downhills and turns or millimeters in moguls or skating leaps or biathlons. Every competitor at this level has devoted endless time to honing the smallest aspect of their craft and practicing and learning and refining and learning again from mistakes or the successes of competitors. No one arrives here through an easy road, even if it looks easy, that's part of the art of athletes.

I could go on but I hope the point is clear that at its core athletics remains a moral endeavor of a human being stretching and expanding themselves and reminding us of human possibilities. A colleague of mine summarized it quite well when she described searching for a person with:

"The passion of the Olympic hockey players, the joie de vivre of the snowboarders, and the amazing combination of versatility and dedication exhibited in the Nordic combine."

The Olympics and Nationalism

The Winter Olympics opens today. Pageantry, glory, promise, 800 plus hours of NBC TV on 5 channels, no snow and 30 athletes  disqualified so far for positive drug tests. I love the Olympic ideal and truly believe that athletics like art and science transcend cultural and national boundaries. The founders of the  modern Olympic movement dreamed that the Olympic peace (all the Greek city states agreed to stop their wars for the period of the competition) of the original Olympics would promote harmony and respect across nations rather than the realpolitik of endless competition and war.

Even as I enjoy the artistry and achievement of the Olympians, I remember that the athletes compete for themselves but are here for their country. In this world of vagabonds and mercenary athletes this is a time when athletes return to the womb and compete for their country. Lest we forget, they march in together and wear the same uniforms (can you imagine Ralph Lauren designing military uniforms?).

The original Olympics held a tenuous peace but that did not prevent a form of war by proxy in the Olympic games. Nor did it stop regular attempts to steal athletes from one city state to compete for another, just as modern Olympic citizenship can become rather porous.

This aspect of Olympic competition seems to grow from a collective egoism. As a citizen I identify with them not because of excellence but because they win; they conquer; they prove superior to everyone else (if you root for the Yankees you know what I'm talking about). The Olympic peace transforms, as it did in the original games, into a war by proxy; I prove my superiority over you as a person or country when my team beats your team. Hitler raised this to its most exalted insanity with his Berlin Olympics designed to showcase the superiority of the master race. Unfortunately Jesse Owens and the University of Washington crew team, among others, showed up and punctured the Swastika clad  propaganda staged Olympics. During the cold war years TV commentators breathlessly kept medal counts, kind of like the ballistic missile counts, to see whether the US or USSR would "win." (Now if you think about figure skating as an agent for the cold war, it does seem a little silly).

The Olympics also permits a form of assymmetric war to occur. Small countries or poor countries can invest alot in athletics or pick a few sports to excel in.  The most successful and tragic episode occurred with East Germany, a small state, the Prussian remnant of Germany occupied by the Russians at the end of World War II. The country made a concerted and secret effort to reinforce its identity and legitimacy through sports superiority. Young boys and girls were recruited at a very early age; sequestered in sports clubs and academies where they trained relentlessly. They lived in splendid and privileged isolation from the poor society at large. The kids were also fed a finely calibrated diet of "vitamins" to ensure their health. The steroids and hormones they ingested generated immense strength, more rigorous training because they bounced back faster and created prodigious human beings. For over 15 years East German men, but especially women, who looked like mutant Valkeries, dominated swimming, track and field and weight lifting. The whole state sponsored system was designed to prove the superiority of communism over capitalism. It provided a great counterpoint to the relative failure of West German athletes and offset the incredible West German economic and political success.

The Olympic and World medals piled up. Other countries noticed the inhuman physique of the athletes. The whole house of cards came down as drug testing got better and the East European communist system collapsed. The lingering results today are a group of men and women who against their knowledge were permanently injured, as were many of their children, by the experiments upon them in the name of garnering Olympic glory and stature for their country.

I will enjoy the athletes, ignore ice dancing but wallow in curling and laugh at the antics and spectacular innovations of snow boarding. But I will remember these are humans first, athletes second, citizens third. I will not let some atavistic glory in their relation to my country or other countries take away from the true glory of their achievments.