Washed-Up: Science Fiction

[penthius]

You talk about washed-up athletes, the conversation is going to inevitably come around to Antoine Blizzrad. Yeah, the Blizz, the Blizzard, whatever nickname people conjured up based on a transposition of his last name. Whatever. He had a good ten years, which is more than a lot of athletes get when they're playing in zero-G. Something about bone frailty increasing and what happens when they don't stick to the weights and the diet and all the other special stuff. They mostly don't, I hear partly because they've already got such a busy schedule with working out and training and rehearsing for the games, and partly because the coaches and agents don't emphasize it heavily for most of the players. Why would you want a player to waste precious time, maybe burn energy that he could use in the next game to help you win, for no better reason than so that over the course of the next 8 years, he's still able to walk on Earth? Especially when the average career is something ridiculously short like 3 years. That's what I heard, anyway. It's not like I looked it up to verify the information. But it sounds about right. And the ones who do keep up the regimen, and who do okay after they retire, well, it's true: they're usually not the best players. You can tell that they're training for two different things at the same time. Sometimes cross-training works well, for some of those Olympic-level athletes you hear about who had a choice of which event to qualify in, but most of the time it just works reflexes and muscles and such that end up working against each other and making injury more likely because some muscle groups are overdeveloped.

Inspiration: Phil listening to a sports podcast in the background.
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: Character sketch. Hadn't even gotten to the crazy ex-athlete stuff yet!