This morning I pedaled to Fort Schuyler and Maritime College. There, I stopped to enjoy some of the bread I picked up at Addeo’s and a piece of Macadam Munster cheese. As I sipped some Poland Spring, I thought about the controversy over “hydration breaks” in this year’s World Cup football games.
Some commentators, including several former players, have expressed their displeasure over them. Some claimed, perhaps rightly, that they were instituted simply to allow time for commercials. In most of the world, the game stops only at halftime, and that break is shorter than the typical halftime of an American football game. (That is one reason why soccer games don’t have halftime shows.) There are no stoppages for “time outs,” “downs,” “innings” or any other reason. That lack of pause for commercials is said to be one of the reasons why soccer (and bicycle races, which also aren’t divided into quarters, periods or innings and don’t have time-outs) doesn’t have as wide an audience as (American) football or baseball: If potential sponsors can’t advertise, networks won’t broadcast.
Those who complain that hydration breaks allow commercials say that it “cheapens” or “Americanizes” the tournament and sport. Now, I understand not wanting to see commercials, but talking about “Americanization” reeks of snobbishness. If they are going to say football is “the world’s game,” they have to be willing to include all nations, even the ones they don’t like.
(Having said that, I am ashamed of how American officials treated the Iranian team.)
Another objection to hydration breaks is that they “interrupt the flow of the game.” Some athletes may feel that when they are in a “groove,” any sort of stoppage can disrupt their rhythm. But I suspect that they also realize those pauses, whether for halftime or any other reason, can come at any moment in their cycle. I am sure it frustrates them, but they deal with it.
Then there is another group of objectors who wonder, in coded language, whether the need for hydration breaks means that today’s players aren’t as tough—“less manly”—than those of generations past. It’s essentially why Tour de France founder Henri Desgranges wouldn’t allow riders to use derailleurs, even though the race includes “hors de categorie” climbs.
I guess I had some of that macho streak when I was younger. I took pride in riding higher gears at a higher cadence than my riding buddies—and on finishing a “century” (in miles, not kilometers) without taking even a sip from my water bottle.
What did any of that prove? The same thing as running and kicking for 120 minutes in 40c heat with 90 percent humidity. Or making every pitch a 100 MPH fastball. Or, in James Wright’s words, “galloping terribly against each other’s bodies.”
The only thing they prove is that there are some things human bodies simply aren’t designed to do, yet some people will do them with the hope of gleaming whatever rewards, whether in money, adulation or simple ego gratification, may accrue.
Poland Sprins sure feels good on a hot morning ride, whatever my younger self might’ve thought.
