10 ms·

Of all the forms of immortality, my favorite is participating in a competition in such a brilliant, incorrect way that a rule is permanently added just for you.

fimbulvetr 4y ago
My favorite is Eddie the Eagle. Watch the movie or read the book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_the_Eagle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_the_Eagle
- couchand 4y ago
  Unbelievable! > He received confirmation of his qualification for the games while working as a plasterer and temporarily residing in a Finnish mental hospital, due to lack of funds for alternative accommodation rather than as a patient.
- bombcar 4y ago
  There was a rule added to baseball about making a "mockery of the game" for sending a midget in to pinch-hit, and having nearly no strike zone, he walked on four balls. > American League president Will Harridge, saying Veeck was making a mockery of the game, voided Gaedel's contract the next day. In response, Veeck threatened to request an official ruling on whether Yankees shortstop and reigning American League MVP Phil Rizzuto, who stood 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m), was a short ballplayer or a tall dwarf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gaedel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gaedel
stubish 4y ago
Famous, or sometimes infamous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underarm_bowling_incident_of_1981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underarm_bowling_incident_of_1...
- caf 4y ago
  In the same sport there's also the Mankad.
  - kumarharsh 4y ago
    But that's not an illegal move - interestingly, ICC (the body which regulates Cricket) has always recognized the move as official - specifically confirming it as such after the recent incident involving the women's teams of India & England.
QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
Or of course this could become the new meta, which from a viewer perspective might be even better
Someone 4y ago
It’s not likely that will make you immortal. Being forbidden, your technique will not be used, so your name won’t be mentioned, and it will be forgotten (You might get famous if your technique keeps getting used by accident) For example, there’s “Félix Erausquín”, who invented a javelin throwing technique you probably never heard of. http://rethinkingathletics.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-javelin-controversy.html http://rethinkingathletics.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-javelin-...: However the true revolution of javelin throw came in 1956 when a 49 year old spaniard, Félix Erausquín, invented what came to be called the “spanish style”. Erausquín was a specialist of shot put and discus throw (with several national titles and records) but also of the “barra vasca” which consists in throwing a heavy rod using a rotational technique. Erausquín adapted the style of the barra to javelin throw with a greased hand and managed a throw of 83.40 m at a few centimetres of the world record. […] Could the spaniards have won the 1956 Olympic javelin title? Yes and no. Had they kept the style secret till Melbourne they would certainly have taken the javelin world by surprise. However at the beginning of October, a month and a half before the Games, Salcedo used the new style during a competition in Paris. This opened the way for experimentation with the new technique to non-spanish athletes but also alerted the instances of the international federation who by the end of the month had modified the rules so as to ban the rotational technique. However, even if they had kept the secret, the athletes from Spain would not have had the occasion to throw at Melbourne since Franco’s government had, at the last moment, decided to boycott the Games.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  >For example, there’s “Félix Erausquín”, who invented a javelin throwing technique you probably never heard of. But who's infinitely more known than his contemporaries who didn't do some interesting footnote-worthy thing like that and therefore get mentioned far less.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Exactly. I have, as of a moment ago, read exactly one article about javelin throwing in my life, and it was about that guy and the throwing technique he invented.
zardo 4y ago
I'm surprised they don't just DQ him under an intentionally vague rule on reckless maneuvers.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  Sports don’t generally work that way, especially in the US. If it’s not specifically against the rules but clearly should be, you get the old “great job! Never do it again!”
  - 6stringmerc 4y ago
    I recall “if you ain’t cheating’ you ain’t tryin’” has been a part of NASCAR since getting more money than running shine.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      The top competitors of any sport tend to inherently filter for those who are willing to go to extreme lengths to win.
      - 6stringmerc 4y ago
        Something something Lance Armstrong…good point I think you made.
  - zardo 4y ago
    Motorsports generally have a rule like, "safety violation deemed at official's discretion". The wikipage on NASCAR rules looks like it has just such a rule.
bitL 4y ago
One for the history books alongside Zanardi's "The Pass" (banned right after it happened).
jansan 4y ago
David Berkoff's underwater dolphin kick is such an example. Even better is the Fosbury flop, which was just accepted as a superior technique and no rules were adjusted.
- JackFr 4y ago
  However modern foam pads were a prerequisite. If you Fosbury flop into sawdust and sand your career won’t last long.
- sc0ttyd 4y ago
  A counterexample to the Fosbury Flop was Tuariki Delamere's Front Flip in the long jump, which was immediately banned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe0zi_fkyts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe0zi_fkyts
inasio 4y ago
Agree! Reminds me of swimmers going underwater for most of the backstroke event in the Seoul Olympics [0] [0] https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/when-the-backstroke-went-rogue-how-david-berkoff-and-underwater-power-changed-the-event/ https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/when-the-backstro...
eCa 4y ago
My favourite of these is probably Graeme Obree[1] who managed to get not one, but two very different bike positions banned in the ’90s after setting the hour record using one of them and winning the world championship using the other. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree
- ArnoVW 4y ago
  A bit like Michael Guerra? I haven't checked, but if his trick didn't get banned... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iz7ZMALaCY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iz7ZMALaCY
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Heh, I'd never seen the full clip of that and the scooter driver's reaction just about had me spit on my keyboard over here.
    - andrewflnr 4y ago
      Same here. Your comment convinced me to click, no regrets. :D
      - bombcar 4y ago
        1. The scooter guy reaction 2. The scooter guy decides "can't beat 'em might as well join him" 3. The poor mobility scooter being passed by all this
  - grvdrm 4y ago
    Saw this recently. Amazing and frightening!
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    while this is of course very cool, I was always convinced that it also included a motor. The acceleration seems too abrupt for just a Cd advantage, and that was right around the time of the big motor in chassis scandals
6stringmerc 4y ago
If he wins the NASCAR cup maybe it can be asterisked as the “Deviousness Trophy”
ekianjo 4y ago
> Of all the forms of immortality, my favorite is participating in a competition in such a brilliant, incorrect way that a rule is permanently added just for you. That's precisely why car races are boring these days. Everything is forbidden and over-regulated so there's no space for innovation anymore. Look at F1 and its bloat of regulations.
- joshu 4y ago
  Probably don’t paint the entire sport with one brush. Lots of racing is very exciting, especially to the people who are doing it (the vast majority of racing is amateur/club/etc.) Bergmeister vs Magnussen wasn’t that long ago…
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  But in F1 it's exciting because you never know what rules they are gonna enforce this time and for whom. /s Edit: on a more serious note: The regulations are so tight to keep it exciting. Frustratingly, if the regulations are more open, one of the better funded teams will just run away with the best car. That already happened in some seasons, but would be even worse without tight regulations.
  - joshu 4y ago
    I have a historic car that ended up banned at Le Mans over rules and caused Lotus to stop competing while at the same Ferrari did not get banned from the same race despite also falling afoul of some different rules. at least according to legend, anyway.
    - ajmurmann 4y ago
      According to Adrian Newey's book it came out in 2015 that Ferrari had a secret deal with the FIA that allowed Ferrari to veto any regulation changes. It also is interesting how cars in the early 90s started to have more advanced electronics like active suspension which Ferrari never got to work and then those things got banned.
lisper 4y ago
When I was in high school a local science museum had an annual paper airplane contest. One of the events was duration of flight. The launch platform was a second-story landing. One year I won with a simple piece of paper the size of a dollar bill that was bent into a S-shape profile so that it would twirl as it fell. It turns out this is actually a legitimate way to produce lift, and actual human-carrying aircraft have been built with wings that use this principle, but I didn't know that at the time, and neither did the competition organizers. They thought I was cheating, and so did I. So the next year they tried to change the rules in a way that would disqualify my design but they couldn't come up with a legitimate way to phrase such a rule, so in the end they decided on a very clever solution: all entries in the duration-of-flight event had to carry a penny as a payload. So I built a very large version of the same design out of computer punch cards taped together, and won again. I'm still proud of that.
- thrtythreeforty 4y ago
  This is sort of similar to helicopter autorotation, isn't it?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Yes, this is basically how you are supposed to crash-land a helicopter if the engine fails.
    - K0balt 4y ago
      Actually in this case he’s using an airfoil spinning on a horizontal axis perpendicular to the direction of flight. But yes, helicopters can be safely landed this way without power (not crash landed, but actually landed, though crashing is always an option lol) Also, gyrocopters use the same principle for all phases of controlled flight, by simply using a traction engine to move the aircraft foreword, with a free spinning, unpowered, typically fixed pitch or no cyclic control rotor providing the lift.
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
metaphor 4y ago
Surprised Smokey Yunick's name isn't mentioned anywhere. Reminds me of this entertaining seminar[1] of a bunch of old school IMSA racers describing how they got "creative" racing around the rules to gain an unfair advantage. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfq7-1ePW-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfq7-1ePW-M
- mindcrime 4y ago
  It always makes me happy to see Smokey Yunick's name come up on HN. It doesn't happen very often[1], but he was clearly a "hacker" as much as any programmer or computer science guy was! [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22smokey%20yunick%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
ratg13 4y ago
Often referred to as the "air bud" defense.
des1nderlase 4y ago
I'd like to see an XKCD with this statement.

fimbulvetr 4y ago

My favorite is Eddie the Eagle. Watch the movie or read the book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_the_Eagle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_the_Eagle

couchand 4y ago
Unbelievable! > He received confirmation of his qualification for the games while working as a plasterer and temporarily residing in a Finnish mental hospital, due to lack of funds for alternative accommodation rather than as a patient.
bombcar 4y ago
There was a rule added to baseball about making a "mockery of the game" for sending a midget in to pinch-hit, and having nearly no strike zone, he walked on four balls. > American League president Will Harridge, saying Veeck was making a mockery of the game, voided Gaedel's contract the next day. In response, Veeck threatened to request an official ruling on whether Yankees shortstop and reigning American League MVP Phil Rizzuto, who stood 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m), was a short ballplayer or a tall dwarf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gaedel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gaedel

stubish 4y ago

Famous, or sometimes infamous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underarm_bowling_incident_of_1981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underarm_bowling_incident_of_1...

caf 4y ago
In the same sport there's also the Mankad.
- kumarharsh 4y ago
  But that's not an illegal move - interestingly, ICC (the body which regulates Cricket) has always recognized the move as official - specifically confirming it as such after the recent incident involving the women's teams of India & England.

QuadmasterXLII 4y ago

Or of course this could become the new meta, which from a viewer perspective might be even better

Someone 4y ago

It’s not likely that will make you immortal. Being forbidden, your technique will not be used, so your name won’t be mentioned, and it will be forgotten (You might get famous if your technique keeps getting used by accident) For example, there’s “Félix Erausquín”, who invented a javelin throwing technique you probably never heard of. http://rethinkingathletics.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-javelin-controversy.html http://rethinkingathletics.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-javelin-...: However the true revolution of javelin throw came in 1956 when a 49 year old spaniard, Félix Erausquín, invented what came to be called the “spanish style”. Erausquín was a specialist of shot put and discus throw (with several national titles and records) but also of the “barra vasca” which consists in throwing a heavy rod using a rotational technique. Erausquín adapted the style of the barra to javelin throw with a greased hand and managed a throw of 83.40 m at a few centimetres of the world record. […] Could the spaniards have won the 1956 Olympic javelin title? Yes and no. Had they kept the style secret till Melbourne they would certainly have taken the javelin world by surprise. However at the beginning of October, a month and a half before the Games, Salcedo used the new style during a competition in Paris. This opened the way for experimentation with the new technique to non-spanish athletes but also alerted the instances of the international federation who by the end of the month had modified the rules so as to ban the rotational technique. However, even if they had kept the secret, the athletes from Spain would not have had the occasion to throw at Melbourne since Franco’s government had, at the last moment, decided to boycott the Games.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
>For example, there’s “Félix Erausquín”, who invented a javelin throwing technique you probably never heard of. But who's infinitely more known than his contemporaries who didn't do some interesting footnote-worthy thing like that and therefore get mentioned far less.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Exactly. I have, as of a moment ago, read exactly one article about javelin throwing in my life, and it was about that guy and the throwing technique he invented.

zardo 4y ago

I'm surprised they don't just DQ him under an intentionally vague rule on reckless maneuvers.

Godel_unicode 4y ago
Sports don’t generally work that way, especially in the US. If it’s not specifically against the rules but clearly should be, you get the old “great job! Never do it again!”
- 6stringmerc 4y ago
  I recall “if you ain’t cheating’ you ain’t tryin’” has been a part of NASCAR since getting more money than running shine.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    The top competitors of any sport tend to inherently filter for those who are willing to go to extreme lengths to win.
    - 6stringmerc 4y ago
      Something something Lance Armstrong…good point I think you made.
- zardo 4y ago
  Motorsports generally have a rule like, "safety violation deemed at official's discretion". The wikipage on NASCAR rules looks like it has just such a rule.

bitL 4y ago

One for the history books alongside Zanardi's "The Pass" (banned right after it happened).

jansan 4y ago

David Berkoff's underwater dolphin kick is such an example. Even better is the Fosbury flop, which was just accepted as a superior technique and no rules were adjusted.

JackFr 4y ago
However modern foam pads were a prerequisite. If you Fosbury flop into sawdust and sand your career won’t last long.
sc0ttyd 4y ago
A counterexample to the Fosbury Flop was Tuariki Delamere's Front Flip in the long jump, which was immediately banned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe0zi_fkyts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe0zi_fkyts

inasio 4y ago

Agree! Reminds me of swimmers going underwater for most of the backstroke event in the Seoul Olympics [0] [0] https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/when-the-backstroke-went-rogue-how-david-berkoff-and-underwater-power-changed-the-event/ https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/when-the-backstro...

eCa 4y ago

My favourite of these is probably Graeme Obree[1] who managed to get not one, but two very different bike positions banned in the ’90s after setting the hour record using one of them and winning the world championship using the other. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree

ArnoVW 4y ago
A bit like Michael Guerra? I haven't checked, but if his trick didn't get banned... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iz7ZMALaCY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iz7ZMALaCY
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Heh, I'd never seen the full clip of that and the scooter driver's reaction just about had me spit on my keyboard over here.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    Same here. Your comment convinced me to click, no regrets. :D
    - bombcar 4y ago
      1. The scooter guy reaction 2. The scooter guy decides "can't beat 'em might as well join him" 3. The poor mobility scooter being passed by all this
- grvdrm 4y ago
  Saw this recently. Amazing and frightening!
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  while this is of course very cool, I was always convinced that it also included a motor. The acceleration seems too abrupt for just a Cd advantage, and that was right around the time of the big motor in chassis scandals

6stringmerc 4y ago

If he wins the NASCAR cup maybe it can be asterisked as the “Deviousness Trophy”

ekianjo 4y ago

> Of all the forms of immortality, my favorite is participating in a competition in such a brilliant, incorrect way that a rule is permanently added just for you. That's precisely why car races are boring these days. Everything is forbidden and over-regulated so there's no space for innovation anymore. Look at F1 and its bloat of regulations.

joshu 4y ago
Probably don’t paint the entire sport with one brush. Lots of racing is very exciting, especially to the people who are doing it (the vast majority of racing is amateur/club/etc.) Bergmeister vs Magnussen wasn’t that long ago…
ajmurmann 4y ago
But in F1 it's exciting because you never know what rules they are gonna enforce this time and for whom. /s Edit: on a more serious note: The regulations are so tight to keep it exciting. Frustratingly, if the regulations are more open, one of the better funded teams will just run away with the best car. That already happened in some seasons, but would be even worse without tight regulations.
- joshu 4y ago
  I have a historic car that ended up banned at Le Mans over rules and caused Lotus to stop competing while at the same Ferrari did not get banned from the same race despite also falling afoul of some different rules. at least according to legend, anyway.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    According to Adrian Newey's book it came out in 2015 that Ferrari had a secret deal with the FIA that allowed Ferrari to veto any regulation changes. It also is interesting how cars in the early 90s started to have more advanced electronics like active suspension which Ferrari never got to work and then those things got banned.

lisper 4y ago

When I was in high school a local science museum had an annual paper airplane contest. One of the events was duration of flight. The launch platform was a second-story landing. One year I won with a simple piece of paper the size of a dollar bill that was bent into a S-shape profile so that it would twirl as it fell. It turns out this is actually a legitimate way to produce lift, and actual human-carrying aircraft have been built with wings that use this principle, but I didn't know that at the time, and neither did the competition organizers. They thought I was cheating, and so did I. So the next year they tried to change the rules in a way that would disqualify my design but they couldn't come up with a legitimate way to phrase such a rule, so in the end they decided on a very clever solution: all entries in the duration-of-flight event had to carry a penny as a payload. So I built a very large version of the same design out of computer punch cards taped together, and won again. I'm still proud of that.

thrtythreeforty 4y ago
This is sort of similar to helicopter autorotation, isn't it?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Yes, this is basically how you are supposed to crash-land a helicopter if the engine fails.
  - K0balt 4y ago
    Actually in this case he’s using an airfoil spinning on a horizontal axis perpendicular to the direction of flight. But yes, helicopters can be safely landed this way without power (not crash landed, but actually landed, though crashing is always an option lol) Also, gyrocopters use the same principle for all phases of controlled flight, by simply using a traction engine to move the aircraft foreword, with a free spinning, unpowered, typically fixed pitch or no cyclic control rotor providing the lift.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago

metaphor 4y ago

Surprised Smokey Yunick's name isn't mentioned anywhere. Reminds me of this entertaining seminar[1] of a bunch of old school IMSA racers describing how they got "creative" racing around the rules to gain an unfair advantage. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfq7-1ePW-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfq7-1ePW-M

mindcrime 4y ago
It always makes me happy to see Smokey Yunick's name come up on HN. It doesn't happen very often[1], but he was clearly a "hacker" as much as any programmer or computer science guy was! [1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22smokey%20yunick%22&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

ratg13 4y ago

Often referred to as the "air bud" defense.

des1nderlase 4y ago

I'd like to see an XKCD with this statement.