I have always strived to balance the physical and the mental aspects of life.
From early childhood, as a member of the Chilean YMCA, I learned to say and to believe their famous logo: “Mens sana in corpore sano.” A healthy mind in a healthy body.
That phrase was written by the Roman poet Juvenal (5th Century BC), when he penned a satire inviting his fellow citizens to emulate the physical prowess of Hercules and to reject the indolent lives of the sybarites and the lazy among his contemporaries.
In addition to poetry, science also supports the idea that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory are larger in volume and quality in people who exercise than in people who do not. Movement stimulates the growth of new neurons and also increases levels of chemical elements that support emotional well-being, motivation and response to stress.
Nevertheless, world-class athletes are not free of stress.
Indeed, stress is what Brittney Griner is going through right now.
Brittney Yevette Griner is a professional basketball player from the United State, who plays for the Phoenix Mercury of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). She’s a world-famous sports figure—an Olympic Gold medalist, National Collegiate Athletic Association Champion and a Basketball World Cup champion.
In spite of her sports glories, for the last few months, Griner has stressed in a Russian cell.
On February 17, 2022, upon entering Russia, she was detained at an airport, where security forces found that she was carrying vaporizing cartridges containing less than a gram of hash oil. Although she had been legally prescribed medicinal cannabis in Arizona, cannabis and hashish are illegal in Russia. A couple of weeks ago, a Judge sentenced her to nine years in prison.
Today, her every movement is heavily constricted. That is a type of stress that requires more than a physical response to be alleviated. It is not a question of hitting the gym to run some laps or shoot some baskets. Brittney Griner has become a pawn in a tense political game of tug of war between the United States and Russia.
Russia’s war against Ukraine is not a game. It is waged on Ukraine soil, but also on the heated space of international public opinion. The arrest of the basketball player provided Russia with a highly visible pawn. A convenient hostage.
Why was Brittney Griner there to begin with? Because she is a woman professional basketball player and contracts for women athletes in the U.S. are far less than what their male counterparts get.
The men on of the Golden State Warriors, winners of the latest NBA title, get to relax their weary bodies and minds for a few months. As a contrast, many women players of the WNBA, as soon as their less lucrative tournaments are over, flock to airports. Their intent? To earn in other countries what the U.S. will not pay them.
In many professional sports, a wide difference between what women and men are paid still remains. Some sports such as tennis and—most recently—soccer, have achieved relative parity. In fact, the women of the U.S. national soccer team, after an extensive battle, received equal pay.
It is no secret that millionaires and billionaires control this country…including the world of sports, the world of information (or misinformation), and cultural expressions. Greed is indeed the bottom line.
If we add the fact that those “owners of all” are -mostly- males who exert a conservative patriarchal control over the US citizenry, we can see why those different payments for males and females still exist. Not just in sports: everywhere.
Professional sports provide a high-visibility tribune for those who participate in their activities.
A tribune where we can see reflected most of society’s ills -and, sometimes- amazing positive achievements.
That is another reason why many of us follow sports. Not only for the thrills that players provide in the various arenas, but because we can also see how those players respond to the various types of stress that professional sports provide.
Maybe Brittney Griner should have been more careful and not carry with her some items that have put her in harm’s way? Definitely. We should all do that, especially when we are frantically getting ready to enter into the super-paranoid space of international airports.
We all have made mistakes: consciously or otherwise. Or maybe you have not tried to smuggle some home-made “tortillas” across the immigration border? How could you leave behind those sweet concoction that your mother made? To be enjoyed later, with eyes closed, after you succeeded in beating the airport security?
What Brittney Yevette Griner did was a mistake. Nevertheless, the bigger culprit, in my humble opinion, is the unequal salaries that female athletes receive in the USA.
Recently, the US Government has announced that -any day now- Griner will be exchanged for one or two Russian spies. Some kind of “package deal” is being concocted.
We wish her the best. Maybe her notoriety will get her some endorsing deals after she is back? Hey, this is the country of the American Dreams!
I doubt it. Those holding the patriarchal money bags have some strict and wicked moral and economic rules. In those rules, Griner is a sinner, while they are not. Remember: they are “too big to fail.”