For many people, sports offer an escape from daily life and responsibilities, whether that be work or academics. However, Daniel Kranzelbinder, postdoctoral researcher and instructor in the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science (CCHSS) at the University of Chicago, finds that his sport uniquely complements his work studying ancient cultures and traditions, seeing it as both an athletically rewarding and intellectually stimulating hobby.
Drawn to the unusual blend between culture and athletics, Kranzelbinder began stone putting as a hobby four years ago. In stone putting, athletes lift a stone over their heads, run a short distance with it, and then throw it as far as they can. In late August, Kranzelbinder competed in the Swiss Federal Wrestling and Alpine Games Festival (ESAF) with the 184-pound Unspunnenstein. In front of 56,000 live spectators and 2.3 million more viewers on national television, Kranzelbinder threw the Unspunnenstein 3.785 meters, producing the 8th best distance in the 220-year history of Uspunnenfest.
ESAF takes place every three years, with three qualifying events in the year leading up to the main competition. Kranzelbinder has been training with the Unspunnenstein for four years but had been specifically preparing for ESAF for a year. Surrounded by a talented group of stone putting athletes, Kranzelbinder finds that the key factors to success are core stability and speed.
“A lot more is in the legs rather than the arms. You can only get so far just with pure strength, so there is an element of just being faster,” he told the Maroon.
Despite the technique and skill that goes into this sport, Kranzelbinder adds that there is always a significant amount of variability with each throw: “Whether I am going to [throw] 3.90 [meters] or 3.80, that is a huge jump. That is the difference between fourth and second. Those feel very hard to control. It’s too variable; things like humidity will change that for you.” Having to balance speed, explosiveness, and strength while constantly adapting to new sporting conditions, different tracks, and even stone types is one of the reasons Kranzelbinder finds stone putting so fascinating.
However, those aren’t the only reasons Kranzelbinder is drawn to the sport. Stone putting dates back to the 6th century in Greece, boasting a rich history not just for its role in recreation but also hunting, self-defense, and warfare. It’s this relationship between athletics, tradition, and culture that Kranzelbinder finds so thought-provoking. He discussed how in the 1990s, training for stone putting competitions was considered cheating because it portrayed stone putting as a form of athletics rather than a tradition. While this is no longer the case, Kranzelbinder noted an interesting tension between tradition and athletics in the sport: “There’s something weird about a traditional sport. Sport and athletics [are] about progress, looking forward; you always want to do better. You might think tradition is backwards-looking and nostalgic, and you have this idea of an idealized past; you try to preserve it.”
Trying to reconcile these contrasting perceptions of sport and tradition, Kranzelbinder, in a very UChicago-esque turn of events, introduced an argument from Aristotle. He discussed Aristotle’s example of a cobbler who, rather than teaching you shoemaking, gives you a bag full of shoes in order to obviate any pain in the feet. Aristotle argues that growing and producing knowledge isn’t done by simply giving away an object to preserve, like a bag of shoes, but passing on the tools and skills required to make them. Kranzelbinder built on this idea to reframe how we understand tradition. “You emphasize the act of passing things down or forward, not the contents of the tradition itself as something that has to remain unchanged.”
While Kranzelbinder agreed that there is a lot of value in recognizing and understanding tradition, he believes that tradition is not synonymous with nostalgia.
Kranzelbinder found that this shift away from viewing tradition through a backwards-looking lens has contributed to the growth of stone putting. Rather than trying to hold the activity in its place and preserve it as it is, competitors and fans alike are embracing the idea of helping stone putting evolve and move forward.
For example, recent rules have now allowed women to compete in stone-putting competitions. Kranzelbinder also noted how the athletes’ skills have grown tremendously. He shared how lucky he is to be surrounded by “very talented athletes who move the game along for all of us. If I see them throw much further, breaking a record, this gives me motivation to try harder as well. The level across the board has just risen over the last fifty years, and it’s really nice to be a part of this and see things move on.”
As interest and talent increase and the perception of stone putting changes, Kranzelbinder is excited to see how the sport continues to evolve while growing alongside it. Stone putting has not only given him an athletic purpose to motivate his training but has also been part of a valuable intellectual journey. “The idea of a traditional sport is a helpful way to think about traditions in a way that is progressive and forward-looking and open to change and innovation. I don’t think there is a tension [between tradition and sports]. I think it gets pitched or read through with this tension. I think [stone putting athletes] are proving that doesn’t have to be the case.”
