Monday, August 18, 2008

Trampoline, Explaned!

Want to be an Olympian? Sure you do, but what’s that you say? You don’t qualify under either faster, higher or stronger? Cut from the JV Basketball team on the first day? Not patrician enough to afford sailing or riding lessons? Well, what about your classic backyard sports? Sure, Lawn Darts have been outlawed by people sensitive to skull puncture, and offering to demonstrate your skill at “Corn Hole” keeps getting you arrested. But what about the trampoline? You remember that thing don’t you, it’s the bouncy toy that’s kept generations of orthopedics in business for years! That’s right, the trampoline is not just a good way to pretend to exercise, its an Olympic sport!

The trampoline dates back to the old world practice of ‘blanketing,’ in which an angry mob would administer a humiliating punishment upon transgressors by flinging them into the air several times, before finally just letting them crash into the ground and become injured for their amusement, notably this is also how NASCAR got it’s start.

Science took most of the human effort out of the equation when George Nissen and Larry Griswold created the first ‘modern’ trampoline in 1934 after observing the net used by trapeze artists, and named their invention after the Spanish word for diving board, trampolin.

After stints in the Air Force and NASA, the trampoline was employed for sport and was contested for the first time in an Olympics at the 2000 Sydney Games, although international trampoline competitions were held as early as 1964. A relatively simple sport (with just the trampoline, copious padding and Dramamine for the audience needed) trampolining is judged using the same, clearly defined rules that make subjective grading so popular.

For each competitor’s routine, five judges grade how well each move (drawn from both traditional gymnastics and other gravitationally hampered sports like diving) is executed, and each keeps a running total of penalizing deductions, which is then subtracted from 10, and then the highest and lowest result from the five totals is omitted. These three numbers are then added to the difficulty score that the competitor accumulates with each move (each move having been pre-scored on its individual difficulty, and placed on a handy chart). This results in a final score that is used to rank the competitors. In case of a tie, both competitors must engage in a round of Kosho to the death.

With this info, you’ll be performing Barani Ball Outs in no time, good luck, and enjoy!

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