Graeme,

You should take your statement "being young isn't a permanent
handicap" and put it on bumper stickers, and t-shirts, and sell them
to senior citizens. You'd sell a million. I'll take one of each. Save
one for Shawn! Cheers!

Graeme Cant wrote in message ...
Shawn Curry wrote:

...snip
Just don't get me started on "Gray hairs on parade" in the coverage of
the SSA annual awards.

That's such an unreasoning prejudice that it's impossible to resist the
challenge. What's wrong with a sport where successful contestants and
honoured participants are often over 50? Nobody complains that swimming
podiums are full of 14-20 year olds. Dinghy sailing champions are
18-25. Not many footballers get past 30. So what? If gliding suits
over 50s, lets just accept that's the way God made it.

Gliding won't die out. There are as many moderately well off,
adventurous 50 year olds created every day as there are teenagers
looking to satisfy a 10-second attention span. In fact it's the number
of teenagers which is declining, not the number of 50 year olds.
Gliding is about to enter a golden age - and it's not because the
shrinking number of high school graduates will discover it.

...snip

The reason for my post was to comment (a lot of that on NGs if you
haven't noticed) how Soaring Magazine represents soaring the sport. I
felt they stumbled this month. I think I was surprised because its
improved so much over the last year or so.

I can't see how your virulent expressions of ageism help our image.
Soaring seems to reflect the reality. It's hard to beat that as an
editorial policy.

There seems an element of personal insecurity here, Shawn. Don't
worry, you'll eventually become an attractive, older man like most of
the rest of us (the remainder being attractive and interesting older
women largely). Being young isn't a permanent handicap.


Go, Jack!

Graeme Cant

Shawn