Would-Be Olympians
We are allowed to meet people now. We are even allowed to meet people in their homes, as long as there are no very large crowds. It's pretty much left to common sense, which is how it should be. Human beings should be mature enough to self-regulate.
Anyhow I spent some time with a friend in the park the other day. She brought her husband along because they have a new baby. I ended up having a really interesting chat with him and found that we have so much in common. Of particular interest was that we are both carrying injuries that we sustained as teenagers during athletic competition. As it happens, we were both not half-bad at our sports and could have qualified for the Olympic Games, had we not gotten injured.
I think we got talking about that because I mentioned that the Olympic Games were cancelled this year. It led to a spiral of reminiscing on both our parts.
Me
I'm sure I've passively mentioned this before in a blog post past, but I was quite the athlete when I was a teenager. Ironically, I was pretty average at running and jumping until I turned 11 and experienced a bit of a growth spurt.
Even then, I was only barely above average at sprinting and other sports. I was radically terrible at football, but good at tennis, badminton, ping-pong and squash. Basically I was bad with my feet, but good with a racket.
I discovered triple jump when I was seven years old. A friend's older brother, whom we both looked up to because he was older and cooler than us, taught it to me. I must have practiced it every time I was outdoors, sometimes jumping up to a hundred times a day, or till I was completely exhausted. It was just something cool to do, because the cooler older guy did it. I think he was about eleven then.
One day, when I was close to 8 years old, I cleared a longer distance than he could - the apprentice surpassing his 12 year old master. It wasn't part of the inter-house sports in my school though, so it was useless for that purpose.
Fast-forward to 11 years old, when I was sent to boarding school. During the inter-house sports competition that year, which I wasn't competing in since I didn't know to sign up, I noticed they had triple jump. No year one boy was competing since we were all too young to qualify anyway.
After the event, when the competitors had walked away, I casually ran up to the take off board, hop-step-jump and cleared the winning distance by quite a bit. The official that was left clearing up chased me off the sand.
A minute later, as I was walking across the field with my friends to see another event, I heard the official running after me calling out "hey you! come here!". I thought I was in trouble and was about to take off, but he'd caught up to me and grabbed my arm before I could run.
"Can you come do that jump again?" He walked me to two other officials. "This is the boy". "How old are you?" One of the others asked. "11". And so on...
Long story short, I was discovered that day and was made to promise I would come to practice and compete in the following year. They were even looking to sign me up for inter-school competitions. None of that ever happened since I left the school just before year 2.
The next time I encountered triple jump, I was 15 years old. At that point I had grown very lean and strong with springy legs. I had also taught myself high jump in our living room using my and my sisters mattresses. I entered both events in my new school - my 3rd secondary school.
I set the school record with my first and only qualifying jump at 15.56 Meters, which still holds till today. This school was more serious about sports, so I was immediately entered into regional contests with other schools. Alas! I was never to compete in any of those events. Later on that same day, I injured my left knee in the high jump contest. I came second in that event. I wasn't too disappointed though, because Erin was going to beat me anyway. He was a phenomenal jumper. He was shorter then me, but had a much better technique that I could never master.
Due to that injury, I couldn't compete any longer, and with it died my dream of attending the Olympic Games. How did I know I could have gone to the Olympics? Well the qualifying standard distance is only a little over 17 Meters. At 15 years old I cleared 15.56 Meters with no training or preparation.
The only bit of sport I did after that was play basketball at university. The knee injury kept creeping up again throughout those years. I had the highest vertical leap in the team, even with my wonky knee. I could dunk the ball easily, but I avoided it since it usually meant inflammation and a week or so of agony after the fact.
Him
He was discovered in a very similar way when, very young in school, he chased down a boy who had snatched a pencil from him. The boy was going full throttle, but was easily chased down by this new year one boy. "Woah, you can run!", the boy said apparently in a state of disbelief. The boy in question was the current 100m and 200m champion in the school, yet he was easily chased down by a much younger lad.
He was led to the PE teacher by the boy and others, and the rest is history.
Eventually he was competing up until the age of 21 when he finally gave in to the terrible muscle and ligament injuries he sustained when he was 15. His all time best achieved in the 100m was 10.41 seconds!! "That's fast!", I actually shouted when he told me that. You could have gone to the Olympics! What!? that's fast!
By the way the Mens 100m qualification standard for the Olympic Games is 10.05 seconds, and he did 10.41 at around 18 years old while carrying an injury.
He also played some football in collage, where his pace came in very handy I can imagine. Remember Michael Owen or Ronaldo?
As you can imagine, we had a lot to talk about. We both share a regret of not having someone offer us some proper rehab for our injuries. Like him, by the time I got real advice about mine, it was kind of too far gone, and I was way too old and disinterested in athletics anyway.
Peace & Love,
Adé