Ask Any Racer, Any REAL Racer…

But gymnastics is a sport. Olympic level gymnast's routines, particularly for men, are much more demanding and punishing than virtually any other competition.

Gymnastics is a judged competition. It's tough as hell, and I couldn't personally complete the first move in a fourth-grade gymnastics meet, but when you need other people to tell you who won...

Really? Let me see the gymnasts put on three layers of nomex and a helmet, heat the gym up to 120 degrees, and have them lie on their sides with their heads hanging off a ledge. Now hang a 100lb weight off their heads, and make them discuss engineering over the radio while holding their arms and feet to within a couple of millimeters of a specified series of movements every minute or so. If they miss a movement by a millimeter or two, or a tenth of a second, they either lose the competition immediately or are flung across the gymnasium on a catapult.

Perisoft,

Not bad work for a liberal.

I keed, I keed.

pwnt.

Your definition, taken as literally as you mean to take it, makes the following people and things "racers": * LeBron James; * Harry Truman; * everybody on the set of American Chopper; * Bristol Palin; * Spermatozoa; * Bacteria; * Dinosaurs; * Kamikaze pilots; * Ken Block. I can accept all of those except Block. Rallying is weak compared to NASCAR. It's always possible to back off, and the only reason anybody ever gets hurt is their own incompetence/lack of talent/excess of enthusiasm.

Oh give me a break. By that logic, any Nascar or road racer can just back off at any time, so it's not really a competition. Rally drivers, like any other racers have to drive at 10/10ths to *win*. Sure, like any other racer, they can back off and lose; that's a point without a point. If you think the clock isn't breathing down a WRC driver's neck as hard as any vehicle, you haven't seen (or done) much rally racing. Their strategy is absolutely dependent upon where other people are. There is strategy in run order and acceptable risk on the speed-to-risk ratio, stage to stage. There simply happens to be a time shifted element to the sport because those roads are too damned narrow to drive two abreast. I get it. You want to wave your dick at the other driver. Well that's you. Some other people care about wicked driving, completely on the edge, in all manner of unknowns, through driving snow and rain and mud and potholed pavement. Some of us like to see what a car and driver can do in a real setting instead of a sanitized play pen. On that point, I think it's pretty clear that rally driving has far more unknowns than a cordoned off race surface, other drivers or no. Saying that a crash can only happen because the driver suxx is a comment that belongs on YouTube. So you can drive three abreast on a 50' foot wide perfectly paved surface with clear sight-lines and massive amounts of run-off and tire walls on either side and rightly claim that you have big balls. I say the guy who just ran across a 9' wide concrete bridge - at 90 miles an hour - with opposite lock - in the rain - through a crowd - has bigger ones. And if I had to choose, I'd say he's the real racer.

Jack, Ken Block's a legitimate driver. The fact that he does 'x-treme' promo stuff as well sticks in my craw, too - I'm a purist if ever there was one - but you don't do what he does without having real skill. Plus, I spent an afternoon with him screwing around in motion simulators and talking shop. He's a good guy, and deserves better than toss-away comments with no purpose other than forum snark. Also, rallying is weak? You can always back off? What the hell is that? And the only justification I can see for your 'you only go off if you screw up' jibe is that it's technically true, because in circuit racing some other numbnut can punt you off, too. But the fact that circuit racers drive at the mercy of the most clueless backmarker has nothing to do with the legitimacy of rally. And on the other side - sanitized playpen? 50' wide perfectly paved surface? And from the rest of the peanut gallery: Puckering? Bravery? Balls? Who the hell opened the door to motorsport and let you guys in? Racing isn't about balls, glory, puckering, circuits, trails, open wheels, closed wheels, or any of the above. It's about getting in a f*cking automobile and going as fast as you can within the rules of the series. Your goal is not to have a large penis, to risk life and limb, to do drive in "the most difficult" way possible. Your job is to go faster than your competition. Your job is to drive on the edge. Here's a hint, people: WHEN YOU DRIVE AT THE LIMIT, THE SURFACE AND SURROUNDINGS ARE IRRELEVANT. Ask some drivers how much they're considering the scenery when they're driving - go on and do it. You think Ari Vatanen was peering over the ledges when he did runs up Pikes Peak? You think that Ayrton Senna was thinking, "This is very dangerous!" as he blasted through Eau Rouge in the wet? Do you think it makes a damn bit of difference if you're on a six mile wide smooth as glass track or a six inch wide rutted track if you're trying to push your car to the absolute limit of adhesion? For christ's sake, people, stop waving your dicks around long enough to consider what motorsport actually is, and come back when you've developed respect for the discipline and passion rather than the glossy glamor bullsh*t. You know what the difference is between racers and REAL racers? REAL racers don't give a flying f*ck what they're driving, in what series, how 'difficult' it is, or anything else. There are posers racing in Grands Prix and racers piloting souped-up lawnmowers. Racing is racing is racing - if you put wheels and a motor on it, and compete with legitimate, consistent rules, you're racing. I don't care whether it's a county fair figure 8, a rally stage, the Paris Dakar, the Indy 500, or the Belgian Grand Prix (movable wing issues aside). If you're racing because you love racing and because you want to be at the limit, you're a REAL racer. On the other hand, if you discount people who you think aren't as skilled as you, aren't in as big a series as you, or who are driving on the wrong shape or surface of track, then you're definitely not a real racer. Racing is racing. Tracks, series, surfaces, ... that's just housekeeping. And getting in these idiotic "which kind is harder / faster / more real" flame wars is just embarrassing.

It doesn't matter what the dictionary says, allthough I don't agree completely with Jack either, but Ken Block is a rich shoemaker, who happens to spend his free time doing car stunts. The fact that he isn't even any good at rallying makes him even less of a racer to me. And drifting is a judged competition, not racing. Rallying to me is racing, it's even the most exciting and (seemingly) most risky of them all, with the most extreme cars, even if I (unlike many other Europeans) understand fully that lying side by side with another car on a bank doing close to 200mph while trying to not hit the car 6 inches in front of you, at the same time as you try to keep the exact distance and not fall out of his slipstream, is also racing at it's fullest.

@perisoft: Fair points. The only reason the glory issues come up is my reaction against Jack's implication that people who do things other than what he does are pussies. I'll be the second to admit that it's amateurish and absurd. And I generally find that people who spout off on who is real and who is not aren't worth listening to. If you are, you know it, and you don't give a rat's ass about it any more than that.

...And if the competition is actually about big brass balls, then woe to hin who dares clank his up against the ones sported by TT sidecar riders. You guys don't like restraining seatbelts, high beltlines, airbags, and rollover standards? The train's pulling up to your stop...

Tell you what, PeteMoran. You cover my expenses, or find somebody to do it, and I'll line up in the 2011 IoM TT. I've already broken my neck once on a bike, I'm not worried about doing it again. The good news is that by imag's definition, you're a "racer" too, by dint of being a keyboard warrior.