Is there anything in the HP world that bothers you?

[psychic_serpent]

No: HPFGUIDX 56560

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "ingachristsuperstar" 
<ingachristsuperstar at y...> wrote:
> Sorry about the second post but this one just occurred to me:
> 
> Does it strike anyone else that Quiddich is not a particularly 
> fair sport?  It seems like a lot rides (so to speak) on how fast 
> one's broom is - on something that is entirely out of one's 
> control, has nothing to do with talent, and entirely determined by 
> how much money one's family has. 
> 
> As I recall, in PoA when Harry and Oliver are discussing "the 
> competition" - Cho Chang - Oliver notes that she's a good flyer, 
> but that her broom is sub-par (or sub-Firebolt in any case).  And 
> of course in CoS we have the whole Slytherin team on brooms 
> that are much faster than most of the Gryffindors'.
> 
> Now let's consider some analogies.  I suppose one would play 
> better basketball in better sneakers.  True enough.  But I would 
> say that short of have _no_ shoes, or shoes with holes in them, 
> that the most expensive shoes one could buy would make very 
> little difference to how well one could play.

But you're forgetting that there are other Muggle sports that 
involve various kinds of equipment, and the quality of the equipment 
can potentially make or break an athlete or team.  In baseball, 
players often have 'lucky' bats, or they rely upon the bat-boy/girl 
to select a 'good' one for them.  Would Andre Agassi or Venus 
Williams play as well on the tennis court if someone handed them 
just any old racket, rather than one they'd hand-selected and become 
accustomed to? They would at the very least probably be somewhat 
disconcerted at first by playing with a different racket, even 
though in the long run their talent would likely override that.  
Tiger Woods no doubt likes his own clubs and wouldn't be interested 
in playing with someone else's, unless he didn't have a choice, and 
while he'd probably do well, it's possible that he would have done 
better with his own.  
 
> I'm thinking its much more analogous to something like horse-
> racing.  Now, I don't know much about Equestrian sports.  I know 
> its in the Olympics.  This to me suggests that those sports 
> involve a great deal of skill in the rider and that, as long as 
> the horse is sound and up to the task, then the horse one rides 
> would not make a lot of difference in the outcome.  Compare this 
> to horse-racing - as in the kind that people bet on at race-
> tracks.  In this situation it's the _horse_ that wins the race 
> rather than the jockey because its only based on how fast the 
> horse is, not the skill of the rider.

No, it's the jockey who wins the race, too.  A bad jockey or one who 
has made a mistake during a race can cost a good horse a win.  A 
good jockey on a so-so horse is more likely to do well than the poor 
jockey on the fast horse.  If jockeys didn't matter, they'd just let 
the horses race without riders, after all.  That would, however, be 
mayhem.  The jockeys are there for a very good reason.  Their skills 
are very important.
 
> Quiddich would definitely involve skill of the rider of the broom -
> there's no doubt about this.  But how can it be fair that no 
> matter how skilled Cho is, Harry is on a broom that just goes 
> faster than her's does?

I think that we saw early on, when Harry went after Neville's 
Remembrall, that he has a natural talent for commanding a broom to 
do his bidding, almost as though it's part of him, and, as with the 
jockeys and horses, this can override the quality of the broom, 
although with a really good broom, a good rider is virtually 
unstoppable.  Is it fair in horseracing for some of the horses to 
be 'better' than others?  Sure it is.  The racing is how they figure 
out which ones are faster.  But again--a bad jockey or a bad 
decision by the jockey can hurt the horse's chance.  After all, 
Malfoy's dad bought Nimbus 2001 brooms for the entire Slytherin 
team, and Gryffindor still beat them.  I'll bet the Slytherins 
didn't know the first thing--except possibly Malfoy--about how to 
handle a really good broom.  Frankly, on the mediocre flyers, good 
brooms are probably wasted, and Cho probably does more with her so-
so broom than you'd think, because she's a good flyer.

--Barb

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