Setting the Bar High

Since Russian sport seems to be witnessing a track and field revival (see page 13), it is worth looking at this topic from a linguistic angle. The bard Vladimir Vysotsky dedicated several songs to the Queen of Sports (Королёва спорта) as some like to call track and field (including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, at Moscow’s 2006 World Indoor Championships, where he added the prefix, “Her Majesty”).

Begin with a misnomer: лёгкая атлетика. Literally “light athletics” or even “easy athletics,” track and field is anything but easy. Just watch long-distance runners cruising at their 10,000 meter pace – roughly equivalent to what we mere mortals call our 60 meter sprint pace – and you see that лёгкая атлетика is in fact very тяжёлая (hard). Note: in sports terminology, тяжёлая атлетика is weight-lifting.

In one Vysotsky sports song (OK, dedicated to a speed skater, but applicable to track anyway) the hero admits to overestimating his physical reserves, as a result of which he burned out:  “I made my kick in the 10,000 meter race as if it were a 500 meter run – and I flattened out” (“Я на десять тыщ рванул, как на пятьсот, и спёкся”).

The lesson is clear: in sports (and in life) one should not сбить дыхалку (lose one’s breathing rhythm) and you should always conserve energy for the final kick (финишный рывок).

Not surprisingly, the idiom финишный рывок appears in countless articles dedicated to presidential races or, better yet, to a presidential marathon (президентский марафон). Analogies between athletics and politics are as ubiquitous in Russian as they are in English: just like runners, political contenders can поймать второе дыхание (catch their second wind) or may cойти с дистанции (withdraw from the race). Some candidates have a фальстарт (false start) and are disqualified. Those who remain in the race are ever watchful for the right moment to начать спуртовать – to make their move (literally, “to spurt”). Outgoing politicos may “pass the baton” (передать эстафетную палочку) to their successors, who will принять эстафету (“assume the relay,” or carry the torch onward).

The idea of the political relay was frequently cited in Soviet political texts, usually praising the connection between generations – thus the idiom эстафета поколений (generational relay). Open up a Pravda archive from the 1930s-1970s and you are sure to eventually read about a veteran, record-setting Stakhanovite miner who is passing the baton on to a young colleague.

Jumping is another area ripe for metaphors. As in the high jump or pole vault, it is common to talk about “raising the bar” (поднять планку), raising it too high (задрать планку до заоблачных высот – literally setting it “above the clouds”), or keeping it “just high enough” (высоко держать планку).

In jumping, success often boils down to hitting the right (correct) take-off foot – толчковая нога. Most jumpers’ толчковая is their left. But, as Vysotsky sang in his Песенка прыгуна в высоту (Song of a High Jumper): “У кого толчковая – левая, а у меня толчковая – правая!” (“Some people take off with their left foot, but I take off with my right” – i.e. I do things my way). Like no one else, Vysotsky grasped the essence of high jumping and sports:

Разбег, толчок...

И – стыдно подыматься:

Во рту опилки, слёзы из-под век,

На рубеже проклятом

два двенадцать

Мне планка преградила

путь наверх.

Я признаюсь вам, как на духу:

Такова вся спортивная жизнь,

Лишь мгновение ты наверху –

И стремительно падаешь вниз.

I run, I jump … I am ashamed to get up:

I’ve a mouthful of sawdust, tears in my eyes

The bar has kept me from beating

The damned 2.12 meter barrier

I confess to you, as if to my soul:

This is what the sporting life is all about,

You are at the top for just a moment

And then you come crashing down.

If there was anyone who set the bar high in life, it was Vladimir Vysotsky. Russia has yet to see a contemporary bard who could принять эстафету поколений from Vysotsky, who sadly died during… the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Such is the fate of Russians who take paths less traveled. Or who take off from their right foot.