I do not write about myself in this blog. In fact, apart from some of the very first posts where I wrote about how I came to be interested in athletics, there is one mention of the sport I practice in the post on mixed relays. There are of course several blogs of mine dealing with my sport but "rethinking" is a blog totally devoted to athletics (where, of course, I present my personal, totally subjective, view of things). This post will be an exception to the general rule. Here I intend to draw upon my personal experience as athlete and present my view on the disastrous, panicky, and responsibility-avoiding handling of the epidemic by the various governments.
But before going into this let me give some background. I am a finswimmer. For those of you who do not know this sport I suggest you google the term finswimming. There are even semi-decent wikipedia articles on this. I am training and swimming at competition level, participating in the masters's age groups competitions. This year the world championships were planned for June. They got postponed to October and transformed into european championships due to the existing travel restrictions.
The author (middle) on the podium of this year's European Masters'
First came the lockdown. All of a sudden one could go out just one hour per day in order to exercise. I am reading the accounts of several top-class athletes who had to improvise training in their backyards or in the street. Now, why on earth an open-air training ground couldn't be accessible to a certain number of athletes is a mystery to me. My assessment of the situation can be summarised in a single word, panic. The various governments, caught unprepared without even a reserve of the today omnipresent masks, decided to enforce isolation on everybody. And when they realised that this was ruining the economy (was that so difficult to predict?) they lifted the lockdown but kept the training grounds off-limits.
For swimmers the situation was even worse since we need a pool to swim in. In France the swimming pools were inaccessible from March to September. The way I found in order to keep in shape was by doing indoor biking and occasionally going for brisk walks. Running is out of the question unfortunately: after 40 years of finswimming my ankles cannot take much beating. When summer arrived I left for Greece and started training in the sea. I came back to France just when the swimming-pools were opening so that I could do my final preparation for the Europeans. It was a close call since just upon my return from the championship I learned that the swimming pools were again "temporarily" closed. This is something I have trouble understanding. How can closing swimming-pools help mitigate the spreading of the epidemic? Swimming-pools are among the safest places as far as the sars-cov-2 virus is concerned. With a minimum of preventive measures (which are already in place) people can swim (and train) safely. It all boils down to deniability. Governments like to be able to claim that they cannot be held accountable since they have taken these and those measures.
But it is not enough to be able to train. In order to participate in the championships one must be able to travel. And there the nightmare starts. The restrictions imposed by the various governments change every week. I can now understand why there have been so few american athletes present during the Diamond League circuit of competitions. And for professional athletes this is a disaster since they need the money they get from competing in order to live.
However what is even more important (and applies equally to professional athletes and to amateurs like us) is that one cannot be an athlete without competition. Competition is not about beating the others (although this is also part of the game). Competition is about surpassing oneself. And this is something that all athletes crave for. I cannot describe to you the elation I felt when I found myself in the championship swimming-pool.
This year's competitions were "spectator-free". As far as us finswimmers are concerned this is not a big deal. Our competitions do not attract big crowds. So the fact that it was only us competitors in the pool did not make any difference. (But the fact that you had to wear a mask while in the stands and during the award ceremonies was not the nicest of experiences). I don't know if the elite athletes are feeling the absence of spectators. Compete in a stadium in the presence of tens of thousands people must be a unique feeling.
I really like this photo of Hassan
And now the season is over. Its conclusion was a superb european record by S. Hassan in the 10000 m with 29:36.67 beating at last Radcliffe's 2002 record (E. Abeylegesse's 29:56.34 was expunged for a doping violation). As chance would have it, Radcliffe missed the 30 min barrier by a mere second due to the heavy rain she had to run under and Hassan had to convert her assault at Ayana's world record to a more modest objective due to the same pesky rain.
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