Wednesday, 29 August 2012

Should Olympic Gymnastics Have Larger Mats for Taller Humans?

After watching the Olympics Gymnastics of the 2012 London Games, I noted that the event was dominated by smaller athletes, teenagers, and those under 5'2" and it seems rather obvious why. The younger kids are just more agile, flexible, and they don't weigh very much, thus, it's easier to throw around the little weight that they have. Well, the best human for the event should win right, so, I accept that, as do the athletes themselves. In Olympic Women's Gymnastics if you are over 25-years old, you are over the hill for the sport it seems. Okay so, let's talk.
You see when looking at the mat exercises it seems that the area is too small for the larger athletes, as mere physics states that it will take them more steps to get up to speed to throw around their larger frames and weight. The taller they are when doing tumbling tricks the more space it takes. This means they risk going out of bounds as they do their routines, and cannot complete some tricks in the space allotted. That seems a little unfair to taller athletes thus, giving them a huge disadvantage.
Now then, what if the mats space area was calculated based on the height of the individual, then it would be fair for all concerned. Look I have nothing against shorter people or teenagers, my gosh I was one myself once, still, in all fairness something needs to be done, or we need dual classifications for size. In the interest of increased competition and allowing the most agile, and best performers to win, we need to find a way to get this done.
I propose a mat with a projected line from the ceiling for the out of bounds, and if someone does go out the projection of that line will be seen on their body as proof for point deductions. You see, we can't just make the mats bigger for everyone, otherwise the shorter people would just do extra flips as they would have more space to pull that off, so, we need a matt which morphs or an outline boundary that can change for each athlete. It seems interesting that no one has made mention of this, as it is obviously unfair and a disadvantage to larger athletes due to their size.
In a world that is worried about discrimination of overweight people, why can't we have fairness to larger athletes, as many of these great young gymnasts will grow up, and if we modify the rules, they could compete for years to come without that huge disadvantage to overcome - please consider all this and think on it.

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