Helpful Handicap

Quirk writes "National Geographic has an interesting article connecting the Olympics of ancient Greece with the modern principles of physics. The ancient Greeks used hand weights called halteres held in each hand when attempting the Olympic contest of the standing long-jump. The idea of hand held weights in the long-jump might at first seem counterintuitive but the idea is scientifically sound and was supposedly first fairly accurately explained by no less a person than Aristotle, the father of syllogistic logic."

Comments

Re:Aristotle...

[Dannon]

I had a professor once who, when asked if he would be grading a test on a curve, would answer that, since spacetime is curved due to gravity, most likely, yes....

Re:yes but...

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

What kind of (dis)advantage would this give in the aquatic events?

A somewhat Darwinian one, perhaps?

OT: Reminds me of lifeguard training from my youth. There really was nothing to prepare you for the first time you retrieve the 10lb brick from the bottom of the 14' (4m) end of the pool. You get down there, you grab the brick and look to the surface, then you try to swim with just your feet kicking, and the surface just ain't getting any closer!
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Awesome if it pans out.

[Ashurbanipal]

When I studied the archeology of the period, we were told that the distances achieved by Greek (standing) long jumpers could not be achieved by (presumably better nourished, better trained) athletes today.

Everybody assumed it was because of the halteres, but nobody could manage to figure out the technique by trial and error (at least when I was in school, shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs).

If this works, we should definitely re-introduce it to the games. Obviously it requires athletic skill, but it doesn't require expensive accoutrements like luges, luge tracks, skis, carbon-fiber poles, etc. etc. etc... just a couple of rocks. Let's have a contest that doesn't favor the rich nations quite so much. That way we can be prouder of winning it :^).

More data

[gene_tailor]

For the visually oriented, there's pictures of halteres in the commentary in Nature along with another brief article. The technical description and data to support this theory about how the halteres were beneficial is here, but I think this is only accessible to Nature subscribers.