While proponents of Semenya’s ban will say that we already divide competition by genders and that Semenya’s biology violates some of those boundaries, the case of Lopes-Schliepp calls into question in my mind why and how other “advantages” are allowed. In particular, the revelation of the “advantage that Lopes-Schliepp had due to a couple “small” differences in genetic code got me thinking of the recent attempt to ban Caster Semenya. Without spoiling too much, I found myself deep in thought listening to this section. Epstein had written this story (mostly, I can’t say if its word for word) a couple years back. Ok, my favorite part of the book hands down was the section concerning Canadian sprinter Priscilla Lopes-Schliepp and a woman named Jill Viles.
I reconciled by the end of the book that what is important is not necessarily avoiding focusing on specific tasks, but instead shutting down potentially creative solutions that can often come from other parts of your life, or other people who lack “expertise” in your area of expertise. He only seemed to know about people in his conference!īut maybe “swimming” or “sports” is too narrow an area to be focused in. At that time I was at my peak of nerdyness regarding international swimming. That was, I kept wondering: am I the kind of narrowly thinking specialist that Epstein provides unflattering example after example of throughout the book? In departing from traditional coaching work, I certainly have focused more on a few discrete tasks.Īre all coaches specialists? I remember talking with a college coach while I was in high school.
I had one big cringe reading the whole thing. Epstein would probably like sports coaches to read the part about NASA scientists and think about how they might change their decision making process. That’s definitely intentional, as one of the general theses of the book is that it is a good idea to apply problem solving from one walk of life to others. While some parts of the book refer to sports, including my favorite section of the whole book (more on that later), the book goes literally everywhere. I don’t know if that has more sports in it or not. I listened to it while i was working out, and although Epstein was clear that the book was mostly not about sports, I somehow still kind of thought it would be a “sports book”Įpstein had previously written “The Sports Gene”, a book which I have not read. I decided to read the book after hearing Epstein on the Bill Simmons podcast.
Hopefully this review will help you decide whether to read it.
I got kind of bored at the end, and felt like I’d gotten the gist of it. I say “read” because, as reader and friend Erik Wiken so rightfully knows, I am loathe to read any books, and so I cheated. I recently “read” David Epstein’s latest book, “Range”. For the first time ever, here’s a book review.
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