Coach Thrasher

Cycling is the new Golf

There have been several articles lately proclaiming that "cycling is the new golf". Today the New York Times has an article titled You Paid How Much for That Bike? Last year the New York Times also reported on cycling in Silicon Valley, quoting well-known VC Randy Komisar, in Wheels and Deals in Silicon Valley. I think it's really interesting that references to "work ethic" (especially in Silicon Valley) to are being tied to "work out ethic", and that people are seeing a corollary between each.

Recently a parent of a rower explained how excited she was that her daughter was going to try rowing. The parent's motivation for encouraging her daughter to get up at 4:30 am for practice was the anticipated effect this would have on her grades. Wow, that's really interesting! To my knowledge there has never been a rowing-marketing campaign that pushed the sport as a grade-increaser. The key to the parent’s reasoning was that the scheduling required to be successful at the sport would spill over into scheduling the rest of the student’s life, including academics, and therefore the student would make plans to be successful in all endeavors.

Taking the two NYT articles into account, is it because of the uniqueness of these sports, the required hard work, or the "extreme-ness", that lets people perform in an all-around higher capacity in life while participating?

As a dedicated rower, I'd like to say to the cyclists: if you think you work hard, try rowing. Now that my flamebait is planted...

This is all quite interesting to me in relation to comments from parents of rowers that tell me their children's grades have improved since joining crew. In my experience as a coach, this sport/academic relation doesn't seem to exist for all sports. When I coached rowing at West Potomac High School in Virginia, the rowing program had the highest GPA of all sport teams at the school… not because of me, but because of the kinds of people that were attracted to the sport. (Incidentally, the football program had the lowest GPA, and the highest arrest rate at the time... yet they were state champions.)

Is it the accessibility of the sport that defines it's extreme-ness, and thereby implies the notion that these are special activities? Cycling and rowing aren't nearly as accessible to people as running, swimming, soccer, or baseball. The equipment is expensive for both. Rowable water can be difficult to find, as are traffic-free streets. These factors should filter-out a significant part of the population by accessibility alone. These sports are also less culturally ingrained in the United States, especially compared to something like baseball.

Back to the subject, “Cycling is the new Golf”, it’s fascinating that high profile business people are beginning to recognize the sport this way. This seems to be the same motivator for getting students into rowing.

Posted at 11:07AM Nov 09, 2006 by jason in General  |  Comments[2]