surfed420
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A question . . . - 2007/02/02 15:22
Can anyone here name a famous bodybuilder or athlete who gained prominence in his or her area while practicing a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle, and whose physical prowess can be said to have been obtained while practicing such a diet?
And mind you, when I say "athlete," I'm not talking about a golfer or an egg-toss champion; rather, I'm looking for someone who excels in a strength-intensive field of endeavor, such as any track & field event, power lifting, gymnastics, etc.
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surfed420
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/02 16:17
The part about the pool stick in the ass is what made me start to wonder . .
.
Speaking of torts and tort reform, check this out:
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/02 18:11
Don't forget bowling and curling (curling is just bowling on ice.)
As a golfer, and a fit one at that, I somewhat resent the slams on golfers, but then I remember reading about some incident back in the 1960s with one of the good but not top rank golfers like Cary Middlecoff or someone like that. At 8:30 in the morning the golf pro was caught on the course with a cocktail by some reporter, who asked the pro about it. The guy replied,
"I'm a golfer, not an athlete." (The same quote is more recently attributed to the modern golfer Lee
Westwood.)
You might not want to look too closely at the site
www.sportnonsport.com. They purport to answer definitively the question of whether various activities are sports or not. I applaud the effort, as I have had the discussion with lots of people and I've also tried to develop a set of meaningful criteria, but I don't agree with all the details of this site's criteria.
For example, in breaking down the degree of competition, they give increased weight to whether or not there is contact.
Anyway, you'll be chagrined to know that two events you would clearly think of as "sports" are classed as non-sports: triathlon and cycling. By implication, that means distance running is not a sport (sprints and middle distance likely are.) The list of non-sports is not exhaustive, unfortunately, and I don't think I'll buy the book.
Bodybuilding gets a score of 38 at the sport-nonsport site. 75 is required to be classed a sport.
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/03 02:06
I was floored to learn no more than a couple of years ago that cheerleading is now considered a sport in high schools. I think there probably were competitions of some kind back when I was in school, but cheerleading was strictly an extra-curricular activity.
Mostly. However, it could be useful if it helps to crystalize in your girlfriend's mind why you're not going to watch synchronized swimming. She may not even ask you...
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/03 09:27
WAY, WAY too high. No freakin' way Wilt Chamberlain should be below Carl Lewis. The most outrageous overranking, though, is Jim Brown at #4. That's insane. I don't think I even had him in my top 15, when I was trying to handicap that stupid media fiasco back when it happened. Chamberlain's got to be at least as high as Gretzky. Wilt suffered in that stupid contest because he wasn't a likable guy.
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surfed420
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/03 10:52
Spinach between the teeth and denim between the labia are two vastly different things. That Bozell can't see this tells me that he's a social moron. I would love to have been there for the scene, though, just to see the fireworks!
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/03 12:48
From the article:
"Timothy Dumouchel of West Bend wants $5,000 or three computers, and a lifetime supply of free Internet service from Charter Communications to settle what he says will be a small claims suit."
So if cable TV is what turned his wife into a bloated pack animal, what the fuck does he think free Internet is going to do?!? That's my question!
Is it wrong for me to believe that the possibility of jail time for filing frivolous lawsuits shouldn't be considered beyond the pale? Anyway, I first ran across this article over in talk.politics.guns. Another poster said that it had already been tossed.
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sugarcube
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/04 02:26
I think "Killer" Kowalski was a famous vegetarian wrestler.
Desmond Howard was an NFL football player.
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Almost a year
Why I like soy milk
"Avowedly vegan"
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/04 04:17
Go back to that site, www.sportnonsport.com, and check out the message board. It's hilarious! One after another, the people who participate in one of the
"non-sports" have written whiny posts complaining that the author classes their event a non-sport. The more obvious a non-sport it actually is, like motocross or (I'm not kidding) rock climbing (!), the whinier the complaint. I replied something similar to several of them: "did you *READ* the site author's criteria?"
As I said earlier, I would dispute his entire fourth category of "nature of competition" in terms of classing something as a sport or not. The nature of the competition may be a major factor for individual spectators as to how much interest they have, but it shouldn't play any role, in my opinion, in determining whether or not the event is classed as a sport.
However, the site author is free to use whatever criteria he likes. I like the concept of the site, even if not all of its execution. It's a never-ending question, and getting people to think about it in more complete terms is both useful and entertaining.
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/04 09:07
By the way...
I once heard Johnny Carson, of all people, make a good point about golf vs. tennis. He pointed out that, at a country club, there are likely to be a number of fine golf players who can play at or even exceed the level of the club pro, but there aren't likely to be many, if any, club members who can match the tennis pro.
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surfed420
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/04 10:28
So it *can* be done, huh? I instinctively believed that while you might be able to live a healthy life without any animal-derived protein, that your potential would be quite limited in terms of advanced athletic ability.
But I'm still gonna eat meat, dammit! :^)
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/04 19:30
I understand what he's driving at with his
"competition" category, but I don't accept most of it in terms of determining if an event is a sport.
Right, but that means they're no longer competing against the very best the sport has to offer. Even
*with* a seniors tour for golf, though, look at the fact that there still are - or at least, were - highly competitive golfers in their 40s on the regular tour.
Lance Armstrong won't be competing in any Tours de
France in his 40s.
I think this is one of the factors that works a little bit against baseball, too, compared to other major
North American sports. There is a fair number of position player over age 35 in baseball, but not too many in football or basketball, and especially not in hockey.
Enough higher, sure. Plus, until the Casey Martin mess, golfers at least had to walk some 7,000 yards.
Dart throwers may walk a few hundred yards in a night, back and forth to the bar, but it's not part of the event.
Did you hear the Phil Hendrie episode a couple of months ago in which Steve Bozell, the chronic crybaby, was crying because his wife and all her friends were furious with him, because he had come home when the other girls were all visiting, and had said to his wife's friend "DeeDee", "Nice cameltoe, DeeDee." He couldn't understand why his wife had unloaded on him, saying he was tasteless and crude; as Steve saw it, he was only trying to do DeeDee a favor, sort of like (in his words) telling someone she had a bit of spinach stuck between her teeth.
I don't think the site author thinks he's suggesting it is.
I watched a fair amount of cycling on TV when I lived in Switzerland in 1971-72. I still remember some great charges Eddy Merckx made.
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/04 20:52
Wait a minute! Are you telling me the AP and other
stories about them?!
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surfed420
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/04 23:43
Yeah, I've seen that. Some of it reads like it may actually be true!
Another fine example of this country's desperate need for tort reform.
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/05 02:24
That's right, we did talk about that before; one more thing I'd forgotten.
When I was trying to get a little pool going, as I described in that post, only the top 25 remained to be listed. I was hoping to get the pool organized right as it got down to the final 20. My pool, if I remember correctly, was to have the top 20 listed, and the top
10 in the correct order, or close to it.
As it got down to the final 20, it was obvious that
Brown would be among them. I even figured there was a strong chance he'd be in the top 10, but I never would have guessed all the way at #4.
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laetitia
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/05 04:02
Well...sort of. Bill Pearl, at least, was not really a vegetarian, and certainly no "vegan". In his book
"Getting Stronger", he describes himself as a
"lacto-ovo-vegetarian". In other words, he eats quite a lot of low-fat dairy products, and eggs.
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re:A question . . . - 2007/02/05 13:13
Here I am! That's exactly what happened to me. I had never stopped weight training, but I began doing it with significantly more intensity a couple of years ago, and my swing went right down the dumper; never got it back, and now I scarcely have time to play.
No, I know that; I'm just giving a slight tug on your chain 
You do get their point, though. In terms of what they're trying to accomplish with their delineation of criteria, lifespan is relevant. When the sheer aging process, even excluding things like being beaten on by opponents, starts to make you unable to do the sport at the highest competitive levels, it seems to me to make it less of a sport. That's one of the things that works against golf, by the way.
My criteria aren't quite as rigid as theirs, nor do I assign numerical scores. I consider broadly whether athletic ability - that guy's categories 1 and 2 lumped together - is required, and whether or not the outcome is objectively determined. On those criteria, golf is a sport, while gymnastics (which I like a lot) and figure skating (which I detest) are not. Cycling and running very much are sports. Golf doesn't require a
*lot* of athletic ability, but the skill factor is very high, and while I wouldn't call the physicality of it
"exertion", the timing, coordination and sense of one's body are very demanding.
I have a good friend who was having the discussion with some colleagues in the office one time, and the breakdown occurred along predictable sex lines. The women all insisted that synchronized swimming was a sport; the men, naturally and correctly, scoffed at it. One of the women whined, "But it's really HAAAAAARD!" One of the guys, someone my friend says is one of the funnniest guys he's ever known, replied, "So is lifting the front end of a Jeep. Is that a sport?" The women all snarled at him.
Cycling is clearly a sport. That site's fourth category, the nature of the competition, is irrelevant. That category is only going to help determine the likely spectators for the sport, not the intrinsic quality of it.
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