Olympic fever is in full swing, even as the Games are starting to wind down. Who doesn’t appreciate the spirit of competition, the athletic prowess, the stories behind the athletes – and, of course, their bodies? Ah yes, the-perfectly-toned, devoid-of-fat, sculpted-by-the-sport-they-pursue, but-all-enviable bodies.
If you were an Olympic athlete, which one would you be? The BBC has an answer for that in their new interactive site. Plug in your height and weight and it returns the names and photos of Olympians with roughly the same stats. Of course I had to try it and I did so with optimistic dreams of being compared to an Olympic diver or runner.
I plugged in my height, making certain to change the British measure of metres to feet, and then I plugged in my weight. I clicked “Compare” and was a little surprised to see that the site returned a rather solidly built female weightlifter. While her body is all lean and toned muscle, mine is not and – not going to lie – I was upset to see the comparison. My thoughts went something like this, “Wow, we’re the same height and the same weight, but she’s toned muscle and I’m not. I must be hefting around a bunch of extra poundage.”
Again, I’m not going to lie, the results were slightly detrimental to my self-image, so, in an instance of fooling myself in order to make myself feel better, I re-entered the numbers, but subtracted ten pounds. Same answer. I took off 20 pounds. Same answer.
And then I realized that, while I’d changed my height from metres to feet and inches, I hadn’t changed my weight from stones or kilograms to pounds. That done, the site returned a comparison to a swimmer, diver and equestrian.
For some reason, I felt better about that.
Want to see how you compare to the Olympians as far as height and weight? Here’s the site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19050139
Go to town – but just remember to change the units of measure for both height and weight, if appropriate.
