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CAN WINNING ATHLETES SHARE THE MEDAL?
My novel Turkeys Not Bees concludes humans are torn between wanting to see level competition that reveals individual competence and alternatively, generosity between winners.
Unlike how humans raise their young, Australian scrub turkeys abandon their chicks to live mainly solitary lives when they hatch. Scrub turkeys in cities have evolved to be more social, but in their rain forest habitat, after mating, they go separate ways, leading individual lives.
The turkeys are individualists.
Bees are social insects, with mating limited to a queen and drones, performing colony tasks nurtured by substances supplied by the queen. The worker bees lead social lives, performing their assigned tasks without reproducing.
The bees are collectivists.
Do most humans in important contexts compete like turkeys or collaborate like bees?
My book concludes I want humans to be more like turkeys and less like bees, in all except team endeavours. My reason for this choice of how humans should evolve is that individualism brings diversity and ecology that is more robust. Collective performance is moderated by group processes, such as leadership, politics and consensus which may not be reproducible nor contestable by others.
My book follows a champion pole vaulter who self-coaches by phenomenology, becoming highly individual.
Here is a recent example.
Two pole-vaulters, Katie Moon (USA) and Nina Kennedy (Australia), at the World Championships in Budapest on 23 August 2023, traded in their individuality by splitting the gold medal between them. They both cleared 4.90 on their third try and when their attempts at 4.95 m still couldn’t separate them, they were tied for the lead, registering one failure each at earlier bars.
A jump-off could have had another go at 4.95 m and then three more goes at 4.91 m, or whatever height they fancy, as long as it would be greater than they both have already cleared but less than the height they have repeatedly missed.
Their decision to forego the tiebreaker and split the medal was charged with emotion because they were friends. Literally split the medal? Record breakers and winners could possibly receive S100,000. Game theorists explain that they were better off, certainly getting half the prize than with a lower probability of getting half.
In most events the two would have been required to continue the competition, to find a single winner. Only pole vault and high jump allow medal splitting at the Olympics. Very few medals have been shared.
Three years earlier in Tokyo, high jumpers Barshim (Qatar) and Tamberi (Italy) agreed to share the gold after both cleared 2.37 m and failed at 2.39 m three times. They both wanted to forego a jump off. The difficulty with continuing to a single winner is that both will tire and their performance could fall off. Competitors with more attempts are rated inferior, supposing a winner has superior competitive ability when he succeeds more easily. Should having more failures earlier be counted against one who is now more tired?
In Olympic weight lifting, competitors can choose the weights they attempt. In 2018, a Papua New Guinean, Steven Kari, did not do any lifting until his opponents had lifted their utmost and failed. With one great lift, he took the gold, an outstanding individual performance. Levellers could be concerned that the others’ lifting had tired them. The result was biased towards a self-confident athlete, who competed as an individual. The pole vault and high-jump pairs were friends before they shared their medals. Perhaps their self-confidences were lower?
Levellers want to have competition conditions when any competitor can win, like in a horse handicap race. The rationale for equality is for amateur punters to have an equal chance of winning. The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord, 1967) is a theory that levelling can serve capitalist investment in many aspects of sport and performance. Events can potentially have several variables controlled to enrich investors, such as faked cliff-hanging scores in team sports.
The performances of athletes can be affected by many conditions of competition, not all of which can be controlled for fairness. In the women’s marathon event, the current ‘Women only’ record of 2.17.01 was set by Mary Keitany in 2017 in an elite women’s race at the London Marathon. In 2023 Tigst Assefa ran the Berlin Marathon in 2.11.53, the women’s record faster for a mixed gender race. Could levelling in a ‘Women only’ competition exclude women who have sped up when they ran with men?
Individual performance in athletics is a precious condition. My opinion is that sharing medals should not be allowed. Do you agree?
Turkeys Not Bees is available on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/hwn74md2
My other writing is on my blog at martinknox.com.au