If the East German judge can do it

[davidrex]

   Excerpts from Balto. Sun as written by C.Walker:

I doubt they saw philosophical implications at first and I didn\'t either.

See, my editor came by and said world gymnastic leaders had changed their scoring regulations and a 10 would no longer,well,be perfect.

Were they skewering the bell curve?...or slapping a question mark on the limits of performance.

Push too far too fast and incidents such as the Titanic occurr.

But just as often humans redefine limits that once seemed inherent.

We pick an arbitrary # representing the maximum performance and some brave soul comes by and surpasses it

It\'s among the best ,and most dangerous, impulses of our species.

Steroid use is a manifestation of the very impulse represented by the new gym. scoring.Damn the soul who said a 9.9 sprint or 61 homers were enough We\'ll injest any chemical we can find to stretch our physical limits.

Gymnastics will probably not usher in the apocalypse. Officials have created a system in which 10 will be a hard score to obtain ,but won\'t be the ultimate.

I like the statement this makes.We think we know what great is,
and we\'ll judge you by that standard,but if you explode the standard, more power to you.

This may all seem a bit unsettling.Boundaries offer comfort.But we don\'t accept limits for long, gymnastics can\'t be blamed for being human. I look forward to seeing the leaping,twisting prodigy who is better than perfect.