#3 SPORTS
A look back at some of the highs and lows (mostly lows) of recent athletic achievements 🏆
This year has seen an embarrassment of sporting events: tennis, football, rugby, golf, and literally all of the other ones during the Olympic Games. I do not personally identify as healthy (more on that here), but even I have broken a couple of sweats and tuned in to one or two tournaments. This edition reflects on three such occasions – plus a bonus submission at the end!
The Can-Can Performance at Halftime During the Paralympic Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Semi-Finals
Entertaining, but inappropriate.
🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀🏀
Rating: 6 basketballs out of 10.
Hot Pilates
I thought it would be a good idea to keep up my Pilates routine while I was on holiday. No, let me rephrase that: I thought it would be a good idea to keep up my Pilates routine while I was on holiday. I was wrong.
Having practised on and off for several years, I was familiar with all the standard moves – Downward Facing Dog, Upwardly Mobile Millennial Woman – but, despite a heroic two-week streak on Duolingo, I figured my non-existent Spanish might hold me back in Mexico City, thus the search was refined to English-language classes. I honed in on one; allegedly, the only such offering in the entire megalopolis, population 22.5 million. Not only that, but it was hot Pilates. With no alternatives (at least, not on page one of Google), I booked myself in. I like Pilates and I like saunas. Besides, I assumed that, given the projected temperature of 35 degrees celsius, it would be a gentle session. Wrong again.
When I rocked up to the studio in the bougiest part of town, the first thing I had to do was sign a waiver, which was in Spanish. “Oh, don’t worry about that sweetie,” said a petite blonde American woman with teeth so dazzlingly white against her perfectly bronzed, toned body that I had to shield my eyes. “It’s just in case you have a heart attack,” she beamed the beam of someone with perfect heart function.
The room was a picture of tranquillity: low lights that bounced off mirrored walls, soft chill-out music, a surprisingly pleasant smell being diffused from some unseen corner. As I plonked down on one of the available matts, the same physical embodiment of LA from the reception desk materialised on a stage at the front of the studio. “Good morning everyone,” she purred into a Britney-style headset, “throughout today’s class, I want you to remember: you have chosen to be here”. I couldn’t help but feel she was reinforcing the waiver. The temperature began to climb. “Okay, are you ready? Let’s go!” Suddenly, the ambient tunes reached a pitch and speed that would worry a cardiologist. I wasn’t ready.
After the first couple of moves, it was clear that not only would we not be doing anything resembling a warm-up, but that this would be the most energetic workout I’d ever done in my life. The classes I’m used to mostly involve lying on my back and wafting my arms; here, we were doing star jumps. And burpees. And dynamic planks. All in time to the throbbing untz-untz beat. This kind of exercise is precisely the reason it took me 25 years to try any exercise. “Whatever’s going on in your mind,” Little Miss Sunshine addressed the crowd of thrusting Adonises and me, “it’s just a snapshot. It’s just a postcard. Push through it. You have chosen to be here!” She reiterated this so many times, along with a variety of pseudo-lifestyle-guru-esque lines, that it began to merge into the soundtrack: the most depressing club anthem I’d ever heard.
Attempting to evade my own heaving reflection beside me, I fixed on the door on the other side of the room. All that lay between us was five rows of perfectly synchronised sadists who hadn’t yet taken a single sip of water. I noticed to my horror that a cloud had formed about two feet off the ground. A literal fog of our own human sweat. When would this torture end? “And now for my favourite part of the class,” – could this be it? The merciful wind-down? How long had we been in this inferno? – “high intensity cardio!” But… hadn’t it all been high-intensity cardio? A smattering of whoops and cheers went around the room. If they weren’t all mid-squat-lunge, there probably would have been some high-fives, too.
By the time it was over, I lay panting in a salty puddle of my own making. Our instructor rounded off her rousing self-help Ted Talk by letting us know that she was an ambassador for a brand of bottled water. Then we were finally released back into the bright Mexican morning: an ambient 27 degrees. Initially, I actually felt quite radiant – until I caught sight of my tomato-red face. As the day wore on, I also realised I lacked any of the “feel the burn” muscular ache to be expected of such an exertion. In fact, I had slowed down and skipped so many of the moves that all I’d actually done was “feel the steam”. At least my pores were clean.
🧘♂️ 🧘♂️ 🧘♂️ 🧘♂️
Rating: 4 smug yogis out of 10.
Bowling and Bouleing
For teenagers in the suburbs of London it was, if I recall correctly, a legal requirement to go bowling for your birthday. Growing up on the aspirational cusp of the capital, where I could be smoking and drinking, I couldn’t think of anything bleaker than whiling away an afternoon in the cold light of Charrington Bowl, or the belly of the Rotunda. And yet I spent countless hours in these unhallowed grounds as my classmates celebrated their thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth birthdays in turn.
Some friends recently moved to the outskirts of Paris and coaxed us out to visit them with an ironic evening at the lanes. I tried to go with an open mind, but the moment I crossed the threshold, I was filled with suburban dread. I’m not proud to admit that I became genuinely irritable for the rest of the evening.
For me, the game serves only to interrupt perfectly good conversations with a completely arbitrary activity for which I simply cannot muster any enthusiasm. Ditto pétanque. I may have escaped bowling in the ‘burbs, but I’m now confronted by boules, ten-pin’s flirty European cousin. Only, with this variation, not only is your gossip disturbed, but by and large you have to do it standing up while you wait your turn. At least smoking and drinking is encouraged.
🎳
Rating: 1 bowling pin out of 10.
Submission
A Review of Reviews, by Frances the Baker
My friends in Glasgow took me to their special-occasion restaurant, Gloriosa. I am not here to criticise the concept of “small plates” or “paying for bread” (by the way, in France restaurants are legally obliged to provide bread with the meal). But, as it turns out, when the meal is this good I do not care how small the plate is, and I will pay extra for more focaccia to soak up every last drop of sauce. I saved the menu as a souvenir: we had roast aubergine, chilli butter & labneh; artichoke & chive butter; chicken livers, chicory, hazelnuts & green sauce. Plus a few more impulsive orders.
At the end of our feast, Stuart sat back and said, in an approving tone, “two stars”. I must have looked confused, until his partner explained that Stuart has his own rating system:
0 – Would not recommend
⭐️ – Liked it, would recommend but with a caveat (liked the movie, but a lot of blood; liked the jazz bar, but too much shushing)
⭐️⭐️ – Unequivocal delight, evangelise to everyone, when can we come back?
What are the threes and fours for in a five-star system? Do they mean polite enthusiasm or a polite diss? Threes and fours are an English person who says a meal is “interesting” when they actually hated it. In a ten-star constellation, everything below five might as well be a zero. And what is a seven? A French person who shrugs and says “pas mal”, not bad? Really they just hate to show enthusiasm in public. It’s time to let go of the superfluous stars.
⭐️⭐️
Rating: 2 stars out of 2.
Rec Room
My mum is walking 62 miles as part of mental health charity CALM’s October challenge in memory of my step dad, Bob. Track her progress here. 👣
Words by Alice Brace. Images by Flora Hibberd.