Confessions of a non-flopper
October 3rd 2008 12:09
I want to take up atheletics again this summer. It's a logical time to start - having just turned 55, I'll be the youngest in the 55-59 year group. It also means I won't be competing directly against my little brother, who is only 53. This is good because he's been competing with the vets for several years, and I don't have to worry about him being fitter and less creaky and beating me. But it's also bad because he broke my school under-16 high jump record and I am keen for revenge.
It is not the first time I have ventured into the veterans, or masters, athetics arena. I first did so in my mid-30s. The state athletics organisation where I lived placed some newspaper advertisements proclaiming that athletics was for everyone. Bring the family and have a great day out. It's all about participation.
My guess is that the government had made some money available for getting the older members of the community off their sofas and into a more active lifestyle, and some money had filtered through to the athletics people.
I had been a reasonable high jumper at school. What fun it had been! I decided to join a club and buy some new track shoes and relive those carefree days.
I wish I hadn't.
When I arrived at the track on the first day of the athletics season and approached the high jump area to register, two things became apparent. Firstly, the government comittment to attracting older citizens to athletics, including the newspaper advertising campaign and, for all I knew, four-colour A4 invitations pinned to notice boards in nursing homes, had attracted exactly one respondent. No one else at the track looked over 30. No-one else around the high jump area looked more than 15.
Secondly, the event had undergone revolutionary changes since I had last cleared a bar.
I retired from high-jumping about the same time an American named Dick Fosbury reversed the order of things by launching himself over the bar backwards, bum down, eyes fixed on the firmament, and legs doing a nifty little straighten-flick thing at the last nanosecond. People would have laughed except he won the gold medal with it at the 1968 Olympic Games.
A few years later, everyone in the world was high-jumping backwards - Fosbury flopping they called it - and the old styles of straddle, western roll, eastern cut-off and scissors were suddenly expunged. Buried with the dodo.
And for 20 years they rested in peace until that day in the late 1980s that I decided to resurrect my high jump career.
None of the above had occurred to me. It still hadn't when I measured out my run-up - seven steps, straight line, 45 degrees. All very different from the looping, J-shaped run-up of the floppers.
The official, standing by the bar, looked like he had been around since athletes wore togas and laurel leaves. He watched me measure my run-up. His eyes narrowed. He walked towards me. "Are you," he demanded, "planning to do straddle?"
"Um, yes," I whispered, suddenly uncertain whether it was even legal anymore.
"Haven't seen that in a while," he replied, and moved back to his position.
There were two 15-year-olds standing behind the jump area chatting as I moved in for a practice leap. Left, right, left, right ... I propped, pumped my arms and threw up my right leg. The left leg followed, kicking with less then well-oiled timing, and I fell inelegantly into the pit.
The two boys behind me had gone quiet. Then I clearly heard one of them ask the other, "What the fuck was that?"
They will be flopping in vets athletics themselves now. But not in my age group. I went out last year and watched my brother at the state veterans championships. He competed in the 50-54 year old high jump. Every competitor was doing straddle. And not a 15-year-old in sight.
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