12/21/24
April 17, 2005
World's most extreme sport: Marathon running in Pakistan, where several hundred bomb- and torch-wielding Islamic protesters recently attacked competitors at the finish line to protest men and women running together. "Last weekend a women's mini-marathon took place in Punjab -- in a walled government compound. The men's race took place outside," according to one report.
Whatever - admit it - that's an awesome race.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 10:26 AM on April 18, 2005
rcade, it was actually a 10K. The protesters probably would have been okay with a marathon ;-) In order to have sporting competition, you need to have some level of civilization and respect for other people's basic rights and humanity. That's what's required to be able to say, "You beat me," or, "Your team beat my team," and not get all homicidal over it, and it isn't just absent in this case, but also in cases of sports hooliganism. The root cause is different, but in sports, you need to be able to accept an outcome that maybe isn't the outcome you want and behave with grace and civility. And, clearly, that's not just the competitors. I dunno, some people question the value of sports in a world that's so conflict-ridden, but I'm inclined to think that World Peace is graduate-level studies, and peaceful sporting competition is at a more elementary level along the same continuum, and maybe -- given our notable lack of success in major grand trampling peace initiatives -- humanity ought to keep on trying to crawl before we go about sprinting. In the figurative sense, that is.
posted by lil_brown_bat at 05:12 PM on April 18, 2005
How troubling! The ways in which people try to control one another never ceases to amaze me.