I think that most people would agree with me when I say that sports are a very important part of culture. One of the reasons sports are so popular is that people enjoy watching others push themselves to the limits of human ability. At the limits of human ability consequences of extreme competition can easily result in injury or death. The high risk associated with professional sports signifies that people are willing to watch and arguably enjoy watching the sometimes devastating consequences of heightened competition. Sure, people say that the competition not the carnage makes sports enjoyable. They argue that any rule or equipment changes that will make a sport safer and still maintain a competitive level of play should be implemented immediately without debate. Do you buy into that philosophy? When I read about the horrific results of the final round of the 2010 National Sauna Championship, I began to question the sincerity of the competition over carnage argument.
I have posted two links below to articles posted on the ESPN and ABC news websites about the National Sauna Championships in Finland. I thought this would be a good choice for a blog post because it shows the ridiculous extremes a person will go through to be the best at something. But even worse it shows that people enjoy watching a competition of death and destruction. It is incomprehensible that the “athletes” are willing to cook themselves to the point where their blood boils. But it is even more incomprehensible that a spectator could claim they are enjoying the competition and not the carnage of the event.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=5198604
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=11351588
I really enjoyed reading those articles. It's crazy to see how far these men are willing to go to show how much pain they can endure. I was especially shocked to read that the grand prize was a set of speakers for their sauna. Competition has been embedded in humans from the very beginning; its weird to see how its evolved from competition as a means of survival to people literally dying or being hospitalized just to show how much pain they can tolerate.
ReplyDeleteI read your title and thought to myself, "That's not a thing". I cannot believe the sort of activities we can make into a sport or competition. This contest in particularly seems exceptionally hazardous though. The pizza oven analogy the first article used was a good comparison. It's weird that people would go out of their way to do this, I suppose everyone has their hobbies though.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why this contest made me think of this, but it sort of reminds me of the show "Man vs. Food" on the travel channel, particularly when the host competes in challenges that involve heat or spice factors in food. I understand that he is getting paid to do such challenges, but anyone else that is able to complete these painful tasks seems to only get bragging rights or a t-shirt. It's interesting to see how competitive we can become for such low benefits.