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The geeky secrets of Olympic stars
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Harvard-educated neurobiologist Gabby Thomas. Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty
The geeky secrets of Olympic stars
With the possible exception of a “soil dynamics convention”, says Sally Jenkins in The Washington Post, the Olympics probably has the highest concentration of “glorious geeks” anywhere in the world. Just look at some of Team USA’s medal winners. Gabby Thomas, who won gold in the 200m, is a Harvard-educated neurobiologist with a masters in public health and a particular interest in “the epidemiology of sleep”. Bronze-winning 10,000m runner Grant Fisher studied electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford, and lists his hobbies as “computer programming and piano”. Perhaps the most “unapologetic geek” is 1,500m bronze winner Yared Nuguse, who got his degree in biochemistry and says running is secondary to his life’s ambition of becoming an orthodontist. “In his spare time, he likes to sketch insects with charcoal pencils.”
Counterintuitively, the overlap between mega-athlete and mega-geek makes total sense. At heart, geeks are people who find an “obsessive interest” in something that most others don’t share and pursue it like crazy. They have a “tolerance for tedium and a penchant for process”. They’re organised, and always seeking to improve whatever skill they’re using. Professional athletes – particularly in some of the more random Olympic sports – have the same attributes. They’re willing to “resist the pressure of the crowd”: to forgo that social drink or that piece of cake; to be “called a stiff”. So keep an eye on that slightly nerdy kid at school “curled over a glue model as others play video games”. One day, you might just see them clutching an Olympic medal.
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Heroes and villains
Michael M. Santiago/Getty
Villain
Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose long-shot presidential campaign suffered a blow this week when he admitted that he once dumped a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park. The 70-year-old (pictured) said he put the animal in his van, with the intention of eating it, after it was hit by a car outside the city in 2014. But following a long dinner in Brooklyn – and apparently egged on by his boozed-up companions – he instead took the carcass to the park and placed it next to an old bicycle to make it look like some sort of hit-and-run. As he explained this week: “We thought it would be amusing for whoever found it.”
Villains
Satnavs, for being too sexy. A new study in China has found that when men use navigation devices with a higher-pitched female voice, they are about 40% more likely to bust through an amber light than when it’s a lower-pitched voice. The authors think it’s because the men are trying to show off in front of their digital companion.
Hero
Boris Johnson, at least according to the Ukrainian village of Tsyrkuny, which is building a new square and naming it in his honour. Boris Johnson Square will be a mark of gratitude for the former prime minister, says deputy mayor Ihor Kuzmenko. “I thought he was out of his mind over Brexit,” he tells The Times, “but he has been a true support for us.”
Daniela Porcelli/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty
Hero
Canadian pole vaulter Alysha Newman, for not letting a good marketing opportunity go to waste. The 30-year-old celebrated winning bronze at the Paris Olympics by twerking on the athletics track, presumably to drive subscriptions for her £10-a-month OnlyFans page. Newman (pictured) is one of several Olympians who boost their earnings by posting suggestive – but not pornographic – videos on the adults-only site.
Heroes
ITV, for shamelessly stretching the definition of impartial. On Monday’s Good Morning Britain, co-host Ed Balls interviewed his wife, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, about the government’s response to the riots. The channel defended the not-particularly-incisive questioning, saying it was “balanced, fair and duly impartial”.
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Comment
Alex Wong/Getty
If only Obama had listened to Biden
For the eight years Joe Biden was vice president, says Edward Luttwak in UnHerd, Barack Obama “systematically ignored his excellent advice on foreign affairs”. Captive to the “latest policy clichés of the NGO world”, Obama overlooked Biden’s decades of experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during which he had heard from – and interrogated – hundreds of expert witnesses, many with valuable first-hand experience of the world beyond Washington. Had he listened to his vice president’s advice on Iraq and Afghanistan – by far the most important foreign policy issues of their administration – it would have saved thousands of lives and “trillions of dollars”.
Biden insisted that Shi’ite Iran would control Iraq unless the US made sure the Sunnis played a key role in governing the country. But Obama preferred the advice of Washington creatures like Dr General David Petraeus, whose “stock of fashionable academic phrases” could never compete with Biden’s real-world knowledge. “As a result, Iran did what it wanted in Iraq. And it still does.” In Afghanistan too, Obama listened to the “telegenic PhD general” instead of Biden, who knew from the start that any attempt to train soldiers there was doomed. The Afghan army was a “total fraud”, not just because officers bought their promotions with bribes, but because the whole idea was a fantasy. Tajiks would only fight for other Tajiks, Uzbeks for Uzbeks, Hazaras for Hazaras, and so on; “none of them would fight for the abstraction called Afghanistan”. Sure enough, America’s chaotic withdrawal from the country in 2021 – for which Biden has been absolutely hammered – followed the “mass surrender of the Afghan army without a fight”.
Love etc
Instagram/@sarahravenperchhill
Sarah Raven was given some invaluable advice at her all-girls Catholic school. On her first day, the gardener tells Lauren Laverne on Desert Island Discs, one of the sisters came in and told all the girls there were a few rules they should always follow. The first was that if they were ever at a party and someone turned off the lights, they should get on the table and shout: “Turn the lights on, I’m a Catholic!” The second: “If you want to sit on a boy’s knee when you’re 16, you have to put two telephone directories between you and the boy.” Listen here.
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Quoted
“What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.”
Margot Asquith