A Different View
Life in the fast lane not always best option
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
When your reaction levels bring you from nought to sixty in about three-quarters of an hour, you seek vindication for your poor fitness levels wherever you can find it – hence the desperate grasping at a new study just released in the US.
Fittingly, it follows on from the recent Rio Olympics where more records were smashed than you’d get at a drunken party in a Greek music store.
But for all of the glory, there is also a downside – or to rework the old analogy: “Run fast, die young.”
The American academic journal, Ageing, studied the life span of medallists from a bygone era – and found that those who finished first also died first . . . on average by four and a half years.
Of course, they could still reflect on their death beds on the scale of their achievement when they climbed to the highest step on the podium – but those who finished behind them then now had the small consolation of at least surviving long enough to wave them off on their final journey.
The findings are based on analysis of the longevity of athletes in the earliest modern Olympics between 1896 and 1936.
What tells its own story is the fact that they chose that time span because they believe that before doping significantly distorted athletic records.
The scientists analysed the performances and life spans of 1,055 athletes from 41 countries and they included only those who survived to the age of 50, thus weeding out those who died in combat in the world wars.
They found that those at greatest risk were the athletes who peaked early and achieved the best results – because they died 4.7 years earlier than their fellow Olympians who peaked later and achieved below-average personal bests.
So they may not have been the quickest on the big day but they also lived life at a pace which kept them in the race a little bit longer.
The serious part of this is that there is a price to be paid for everything – and that includes success.
The great Kerry teams of the seventies and eighties were famously focused on their football above all else; a team of bachelors, as they were called in the language of the day, there was no time for anything other than attaining a level of fitness and skill never before seen on the GAA pitch.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Journalists, for the most part, will never win awards for their sartorial elegance; the traditional image is less of a person in a well-fitted bespoke suit and more a bloke with the racing pages stuffed into a bulging pocket of a jacket that wouldn’t look out of place buried in a hedge.
The exception has traditionally been television where a suit and tie or a dry-cleaned top would be the norm, unless you’re in a war zone where a helmet and flak jacket with PRESS on the front of it are the outfits of choice.
It’s not that we’re badly dressed as a profession, but it’s more the geography teacher image – clean jeans and a work shirt or jumper – than the cocktail party look. And because we don’t have to appear on a small screen before the nation, that’s just grand.
But you don’t see newsreaders in jeans and a tee-shirt – although some apparently might have shorts on out of camera shot – and television reporters on the road could usually make the switch from their day job to a wine bar without going home for a change of clothes.
This dress code doesn’t just apply to journalism of course; the Dáil used to strictly enforce the shirt and tie rule for male politicians until Tony Gregory arrived on the scene with his Dublin inner city street cred and open-neck shirt to make it all a tad more casual.
Then Mick Wallace came along and went full-tramp, with unkempt locks and pink tee-shirts that all look like a white one that ran with a red one in the wash. And suddenly, you have a whole left-wing cohort without a tie to their name between them.
So the rules were relaxed in the corridors of power – and now the BBC is breaking its age-old rules on dress code too….in an effort to seem more authentic and relevant in this social media era.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Paul Mescal has a lot to answer for – and it’s nothing to do with his Oscar nights or his antics in Normal People.
No, it’s his propensity to wear sports shorts completely out of context and season – football togs, in old money – because he has inspired a nation of copycats.
Everywhere you look there are fellas out on freezing nights in O’Neill’s togs – frequently set off with white ankle socks and sometimes even sliders – as though they were wandering back from the beach for an hour on a sun bed beside the pool, instead of coping with the freezing temperatures sent down here from the Arctic.
Last Thursday night was the coldest night of the year and only an eejit would go out without a big coat, gloves and a hat.
Indeed you could argue that only an eejit would go out at all, but at least we were on our way to a play – so that was a good excuse given that we’d spend the night in out of the cold.
There we were, wrapped up like Eskimos and edging gingerly through the sleet along the Salmon Weir Bridge when who should be happen upon?
A fella in a sweatshirt and football togs as though this was a sun-kissed evening stolen from July.
Perhaps these hardy boys look on with the same sense of astonishment at us wearing four layers, hat and gloves – but you don’t have to have spent time in medical school to know that you don’t die from sweating.
And yet funnily they don’t even look all that cold. They’re not rushing anywhere fast to get warm; they’re just strolling around like superstar footballers who just bought the place.
Their only concession to this being March in Ireland and not Marbella in August is the said sweatshirt they’re wearing over their tee-shirt to stave off complete hypothermia.
Ironically – and this is only from personal experience – as soon as they go home to the old pair’s gaff for the weekend, the first thing they do is hit the central heating so they can shed the oul’ sweatshirt and chill, but not be chilly because the boiler is burning away for all it’s worth.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
It’s a strange thing to go to a funeral when you don’t really know the deceased – because, when you take the personal grief and loss out of the equation, it leaves you just to absorb the joy in enjoying someone’s life on their departure.
That’s not to make light of the sadness suffered by close friends and family members; I’ve been that soldier too and I know that there is little or no consolation in the fact that they left a positive impression on so many.
That won’t come until after you’ve had time to mourn.
But when you’re there because you know one of the family and you just want to offer them a little support in their sadness, you discover you’re finding out about the life and legacy of the deceased after the fact.
It’s like reading an obituary of someone you never met, because when a person is painted in such a positive light, you’re only regret is that you didn’t know them.
All funerals are sad, because someone that friends and family held dear is now gone. If you have faith, they’re gone to a better place – and if you don’t, then it’s just the end.
But either way, it means you won’t see that person again – and there are few more heartrending moments in life than lowering a loved one into the cold earth.
And yet when you take that awful heartbreak out of the equation because you didn’t know the person in the first place, it is what funerals are supposed to be – a celebration of life.
You hear family members and friends tell stories – and often funny stories – of the dead person’s life; you realise how loved and highly regarded they were by those who knew them best – and you think, that’s not a bad legacy after all.
They don’t have to be well-known because the best lives are often ordinary lives; someone who just did their job, reared their family, loved their grandchildren, enjoyed a pint or a bet and bothered nobody to any great extent in their corner of the world.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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