2013-05-21T03:43:56-04:00 Philip Dayle http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=philip-dayle Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Philip Dayle Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.953691 2011-09-14T09:55:49-04:00 2011-11-14T05:12:01-05:00

Philip Dayle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-dayle/ he false-started in the 100m finals at the World championships in Daegu, South Korea. My litigious instincts didn't lead me to question the silly IAAF rule that automatically disqualifies an athlete for a false start. Instead, I felt almost a sense of relief.

In Bolt's failure, I saw a momentary tumble from grace that I, as a fan, could live with. Better a mistake of exuberance than a positive drug test; or a show of mental indiscipline, rather than an outright beating. Besides, in the absence of his arch rivals American Tyson Gay and country man Asafa Powell, there was a feeling that Bolt was really competing with himself. Suddenly, the ace sprinter's challenge was a subtle one - unlike the raw aggression he unleashes in one sprint dash after another. Could he maintain his composure after messing up on athletics' biggest stage?

As I watched track fans convulse with shock at Bolt's inauspicious 100m exit, I thought back to the early, heady days of the Obama presidency. Barack Obama had traversed the improbable path from Illinois state senator, to US Senator for the state of Illinois and conqueror of the Clinton political machine in the democratic primaries, to become the first black president of the United States. As if to register approval from some global electorate, the Nobel committee in Norway awarded the prize for peace to Obama, a mere few months after he had taken the presidential oath of office. In this episode, it would be the judges of this prestigious international award who could have been called guilty of a stunning false start, by bestowing the Nobel Prize well before new president had done anything worthy of the honour.

Faced with high unemployment numbers and a pervasive sense of gloom in the US, we have seen the once glowing narratives about Obama curdle into antipathy. Yet despite an intractable economic recession to explain the president's new unpopularity - and in the case of Bolt, his spectacular flame- out because of an athlete-unfriendly, one-false-start-and-you-are-out rule - there can be limited sympathy for either. Impossible demands to delivering results are par for the course for elite performers. Fairly or not, both inhabit a box, based on ephemeral public passions.

Bolt lingered in the starting blocks for the 200m final, not risking a repeat of what happened in the shorter sprint. Nevertheless, he ran a world leading time to win the gold medal. This, he followed up with a blistering anchor leg in the 4 x 100m relays, copping gold and a new world record. Back was the child-like mugging for the camera and his love affair with the crowded stadium. In post-race interviews, he cast no blame on the controversial false start rule: it was his cock-up and not the rule that cost him his 100m crown, he acknowledged. All the headlines later screamed Bolt's "comeback", "redemption" and reasserted "dominance."

Aren't popularity and celebrity comparable to a Ponzi scheme - doomed to one day, sooner than later, cease from delivering amazing results? By making the exceptional appear normal, Bolt smashes records and re-writes standards that soon, he will be hard-pressed to repeat. It's the tragic beauty about brilliance, that it eventually outdoes itself. Between the dint of an athletics stadium and the clamour of a recession-ravaged electorate, Bolt and Obama appear to be in the midst of vastly similar projects. They both trod a path where increasingly, their best efforts may well not win the moment.

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Philip Dayle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-dayle/
The 61 year old American is swimming from Cuba to Florida. More than three decades ago, as a 28 year old endurance swimmer, Diana Nyad tried unsuccessfully to complete this 103 miles, shark-infested course. Her failure at that time, has been gnawing at her. With a 45 man support team, Nyad is taking the plunge once more. She says she hopes the swim improves US-Cuban relations - and fills a gaping hole in her resume.

Last Friday, as Nyad psyched herself for her historic swim, a 51 year old athlete was also making waves across the pond. Merlene Ottey - formerly of Jamaica, now running for Slovenia - took to the track at the Crystal Palace diamond athletics meet in London. Ottey was not there to be honoured for services to her sport, having won more medals in track and field than any other competitor in history. Neither was she there as a celebrity presence, as was her contemporary Edwin Moses, the Olympic champion in the 400m hurdles of 1976 and 1984.

Instead, Ottey was competing as an elite athlete on the anchor leg of a women's sprint relay team: in search of an elusive qualifying time for this month's World Championships in Daegu, South Korea. Viciously dubbed the "bronze queen" for never winning an Olympic gold medal, Ottey delivered a cracking run to close the gap in a last place finish for her team. She was graceful in a post-race interview. As she jogged off track, the crowd cheered warmly. Her sinewy form was indistinguishable from the other athletes half her age.

Not everyone applauds Diana Nyad or Merlene Ottey. The water cooler humour about them can be ageist, misogynistic or lots of both. Mostly, people just struggle to understand their motives. What would possess a sexagenarian to embark a three day swimming course with no sleep and only liquid food at 90 minute intervals; or, where she would need to be protected as she swam, by an electronic shark repellent?

In fairness, most people simply have an imagination deficit on Nyad's Cuba-to-Florida swim. An hour long swim is hard enough to fathom, let alone a three day super- marathon. In fact, one can say that generally, it is always difficult to make sense of new, break-out challenges - the "extreme dream," as Nyad herself puts it. There was much anxiety when women tried to become professional athletes; and later, when they demanded to compete in "rough" sports like soccer and boxing.

And then too, there are also the concerns about unrealised ambition. Is this just a case of self-centred athletes who don't know that its time to quit? When does the admirable reach for sporting goals end and pathetic stage-hogging begin? Ottey has scorched any idea that she is still after an elusive Olympic gold medal. She runs, she says, simply because she enjoys it and wants to see how fast she can go. And as she is having fun, why should she not continue? Of course, like most elite competitors, Ottey also may be seduced by the lure of the history books - for being the oldest woman still doing the sprints.

Nyad speaks about the challenges of endurance swimming in almost spiritual terms. In her autobiography, she talks about battles with the sea and imagines victory as the moment when she "touch [es]" the other shore." But mainly, the triumph of Nyad is in how she shatters ideas of what a woman - or any human being, for that matter- can take on at 61. As she said: "I'd like to prove to the other 60-year-olds that it is never too late to start your dreams." Or, I would add, to do what the hell you want to do. Nyad and Ottey are great role models for both young and old, or those figuring out which of the two they are.

Diana Nyad failed to complete the history making swim from Havana to Florida. The veteran was done in by shoulder pain, an asthma attack and unpredictably monstrous ocean waves. She was disappointed. Perhaps, she surmised, completing this course may never be something that she achieves in her lifetime. But, she noted to her fans :
"It's more inspiring to watch somebody struggle and not give up than have an easy time of it,"

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Philip Dayle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-dayle/
Massachusetts senator John Kerry has revealed that the US Department of Health and Human Services will commission a study on the implications of ending this prohibition - a move that is seen as the first step towards repeal. Recently in the UK, the public health ministry announced an easing of a similar ban, but with a bizarre proviso: the gay donor must not have had sex for 10 years before giving blood.

To be clear, it is perfectly possible to protect the public blood supply through testing. The methods for detecting HIV in blood are sophisticated and a long way from what prevailed in those early, scary days when the world was just learning about the disease. And sexual transmission of HIV occurs only when there is unprotected sex, regardless of the sexual orientation of the partners. But the new UK policy of asking for just celibate gay donors, betrays old, nervous prejudice from policy makers. There remains wariness about the sexual practices of gay men - and a sense that homosexuality is a ready store of contagion.

Back in the early days, AIDS was dubbed the "gay plague," by hysterical media reports. At this time, scientists were still learning about how the virus worked. The US Centre for Disease Control, at one point, sanctioned what was called the 4Hs of AIDS, for high risk categories: homosexuals, heroin addicts, haemophiliacs and Haitians. The very notion of branding an entire nation as a risk group, in the case of Haitians, eventually proved incendiary and was later dropped.

At its bare bones, this idea of "high risk" has always been about morality, politics and some prejudice, as much as about biological determination. Being wary of a group that is disproportionately affected by a new disease, must have seemed very much like common-sense. But continuing to hold on to suspicion, even when medical knowledge later offers more precise answers, suggests wilful embrace of ignorance.

Last year, an attempt to lift the gay blood ban failed in the US. Since that time, the "Don't ask Don't tell" (DADT) policy - a prohibition on gays and lesbians serving openly in the US military- has been repealed. President Obama has certified that this repeal will take effect in September, capping a major civil rights victory for gays and lesbians in the US.

The call for an elaborate study to decide whether to allow gay men to give blood, shows how little human rights has figured in the blood donation debate, to date. The harm from stigmatising gay people, for example, is tossed up against a policy that is supposedly motivated by a desire to protect public health. As the argument goes, keeping the blood ban is a necessary trade- off in managing the epidemic.

Remember when efforts to contain AIDS were likened to "war" and an "emergency" - by people such as former US Secretary of State Colin Powell? Well, one result from that way of thinking, is this continued belief that gay sexual relations carry inherent dangers. The restriction on gay men donating blood was viewed as action in a virtual state of emergency, in order to repel imminent threats from spread of HIV/AIDS.

The war-on-AIDS view is flawed because it stigmatises gay men, as wanton sex fiends, all given to dangerous sexual activities. It also supports the fallacy that the HIV virus may be contained simply by eliminating those who are considered to be the main carriers, from activities of a communal nature. It is this reasoning that leads policy makers to believe that maintaining a discriminatory gay blood ban, serves a useful public health purpose.]]>