"... if a sports player might in some cases, perhaps this one, deliberately acquire a bad smell to gain a competitive edge? Are there known cases? Do the rules cover this behavior? It could be a way of cheating. Beyond sports, what other areas of human competition offer opportunities to gain an advantage through smelling bad?"
For the annals of Things I Asked Grok.
You can read Grok's answer here.
And here's the news story that prompted my question: "British tennis player Harriet Dart apologizes after asking opponent to wear deodorant during match/Dart told the umpire that her opponent, Lois Boisson, 'smells really bad'" (CBS Sports).
45 comments:
1- This is a girl sport issue. I don't think men have as strong a sense of smell. True, guys?
1- How do you smell stench across a tennis court? Other sports with contact, yes, but she's way over there.
There was an NFL player in the late '60s who had hideous breath and would psyche out the opposing linemen by exhaling on them just before the snap. He was also a "dirty" player in the cheating sense, but then a LOT goes on at the bottom of those piles when there's a loose ball.
Maybe Dart was seeking the advantage by unnerving Boisson. Isn't it just trash talking? Would it be in the news if it happened in men's tennis?
I would guess that Greco-Roman wrestling would be a place where this issue might waft up.
Would it be in the news if it happened in men's tennis?
Remember the French player that exclaimed, "I fart in your general direction!"? Maybe it was Monty Python.
+1, Mike (MJB) Wolf! 😁
Was that NFL lineman Roosevelt “Stankbreaf” Grier?
That French stinky cheese maybe?
It all depends on how the rules are written.
In corporateland, it's pretty common to have rules that stipulate that you wear deoderant. I remember once, we had to sit through a really uncomfortable H.R. video at work that addressed how to talk to one of your employees who had bad body oder.
Cowboys QB Dak Prescott smelled so bad that he got an actual reaction from sideline reporter Pam Oliver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfv-NE2-D7M
I had a college History professor who told us he had tried working in advertising, but failed miserably at it.
Given an assignment to come up with a product name and a catchphrase for a new deodorant, the best he said he could do was:
"StenchQuench: Make your ARMpit your CHARMpit".
He was a lot better at teaching History. Just about the best prof I ever had.
Embrace the stink!
Men are just more tolerant of stench. Just ask any rendering plant worker. The next worst was a mushroom plant followed by a sewer pump station. Late summer HS football two a days was rank as well.
"Howard said...
Late summer HS football two a days was rank as well."
Yeah, I remember those days. I'm told though that hocky gear is the worst, especially goalies stuff.
I know a school administrator who had small travel size deodorants that she would kindly let a certain ethnic persuasion know that people in the US use deodorant. Because she was a kindly person, I hope they took it to be the kindness that it was offerred. Much like telling someone, your slip is showing, there is spinach in your teeth or your fly is open.
In Afghanistan we found out that the locals could smell us coming from a considerable distance. I am talking half a mile or more depending on wind. Axe body wash was on the shelves at the pX.
The human brain is good at detecting things that are different. “Smells Bad” is in the nose of the Beholder.
Howard is right.
It takes men about 2 minutes to tune out a smell.
Scent in humans is threat detection. We are sight hunters so our brains don’t have much space allocated to scent. If it isn’t deemed a threat or food we turn a smell off pretty fast.
Mark Schlereth was an offensive lineman for the Broncos, in every sense of the term.
Buy Lume. Dr. Shannon Klingman. Stops odor everywhere; even under boob.
If you think that's bad, there was an Indian criminal that has eluded the police for some time - whenever he is close to getting grabbed, he sh*ts himself, and the stench is such that the police have always given up the chase and let him escape. He must have been a bad repeat offender though, because eventually the police were ready with full hazmat gear and finally nabbed the stinky little man. The notorious Potty Badmash
I'm told though that hockey gear is the worst, especially goalies stuff.
I played with guys who would take their gear off after a game, throw it in their bag, and throw the bag in their car trunk. A week later, they would pull the bag back out (it having been in the trunk the whole time) and the gear would still be wet with sweat. Some of this equipment had been through this cycle every week, winter-spring-summer-fall, for 10+ years. Needless to say, it stank. Far more than some woman tennis player standing 78 feet away, outdoors, who has her own separate locker room.
Mark Schlereth was an offensive lineman for the Broncos, in every sense of the term.
He's now a Fox Sports TV commentator, so he must have cleaned up his act. Although they do call him "Stink."
Anosmia takes care of the problem
The smelly French Woman defeated the bad-teeth English woman
Tennis? As in standing/playing 50 odd feet away from each other?
Jack Lambert, #58, defensive linebacker of the then dreaded Steelers, lost his four front teeth from a team mate collision while playing high school basketball. Deliberately he would not wear his denture during NFL games. To be scary,
https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/Do4AAOSwPbRlWPOJ/s-l500.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e2/d6/cd/e2d6cd7b101d8f6425cb0fae2164b5de.jpg
https://i0.wp.com/theforkball.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/jack-lambert.jpg?fit=600%2C347&ssl=1
Back in the 80s, at Ivy League grad school, a classmate assigned seat next to me for most classes stank of body odor. He was a friendly but British-accented devote moslem man of Pakistani-origin from Kenya. I politely suggested in quiet voice that a deodorant would be useful in context of close-quarters. He took no offense, by next day he conveyed the slight scent of Ivory soap , and remained so for next three years. We became platonic friends, he visited me at my parents home during a Christmas Break, and asked me to marry him by letter after he returned to Kenya after graduation. And yes, he punctually complied with his student visa expiration date, as did the other quarter of our class who attended on student visas.
Dave Begley said...
Buy Lume. Dr. Shannon Klingman. Stops odor everywhere; even under boob.
I was about to say, "Go down between your butt cheeks, down between your Schnitzel Sack and just sniff the suds, and you go, okay. That's what she's talking about."
Professional singles tennis a lonely, high stress pursuit.
Lest the men feel left out of the "Schnitzel Sack" vibe, this one's for the boys. I give you...
Scrotum Sack.
I call bullshit. You can’t smell anyone across a tennis court. If she’s not just flat lying, she must have smelled something on her side of the court.
Maybe it was just her upper lip.
Bill Tilden stopped showering too, but he had a lot of other problems.
I haven’t read through all of the comments yet, so…
She who smelt it dealt it.
Matt Lindland, the Greco Roman wrestler and mixed martial art fighter was allegedly known for cultivating an aroma as a tactic.
Likewise, some Judoka are known to cultivate an intense body odour before bouts. Plus a particularly bristley half beard to scour their opponents face with.
Can too
There’s another possibility - a strategy of accusing your opponent of smelling bad in order to throw her off her game? That might actually work!
Grok didn't cover what disease or ailment might have overtaken Lois Boisson during the tennis match. The three medical conditions that can influence overall health include: trimethylaminuria, also known as "fish odor syndrome"; isovaleric acidemia, which causes some people to smell like sweaty feet; and hypermethioninemia, which produces a boiled cabbage-like smell.
If a tennis player's BO is an issue for her opponent, I gotta think that opponent is crowding the net something awful and could be defeated by a few lobs to the corners.
Boisson must've taken a Parisian shower.
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