We haven't had a "Doofus Of The Day" for over a month. To break the drought, today's award goes to the administrators of a sports stadium in Tonghe County, China. The Telegraph reports:
Sports officials in northeast China have claimed the gold medal for incompetence after authorising the construction of a running track with right-angled corners.
The track was completed recently as part of a major refurbishment of a 1,000 sq ft stadium in Heilongjiang province’s Tonghe County.
The stadium itself appears to have been impressively built and features an immaculately laid artificial grass football pitch at its centre.
But the running track’s designers got their angles badly wrong – painting 90-degree corners onto the track rather than the usual curves.
Stadium officials ... claimed their original track had once featured curves but said its rubber surface had become severely worn down from overuse.
When senior Communist Party leaders recently announced plans for a last-minute visit to the stadium, a quick makeover suddenly became necessary. Painting right angles was faster than painting curves, one official admitted.
“In order to get it ready for the leaders, we painted it like that,” he confessed. “We think it is ugly too but if the leaders don’t ask us to change it, what are we supposed to do?”
The botched attempt to please visiting Communist Party dignitaries has turned the Heilongjiang stadium into an online laughing stock.
“Does the designer have a square brain?” wondered a user of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media network.
There's more at the link.
Now, if I were the nasty type, I'd try to get some lubricant onto those square corners and see how many wipe-outs I could cause in the turns . . .
Peter
There may be actually an advantage to square corners. Some people enjoy sprinting rather than a steady pace and this design gives them that option. You just need to apply the brake quicker, which will add to surface wear and tear (ever notice more road damage occurs where turns and vehicle stops are done ?).
ReplyDeleteHave to admit - it does look pretty silly. I wonder if Wendy's founder Bob Thomas had any influence to it (we cut no corners) :^)
Oh... Just Oh... :-)
ReplyDeleteWhat, another set of asterisks in the record book? Oh, no. That would actually require a completely different category. In addition to Indoor and Outdoor, we now have Square. Heh. And as an official who sometimes does umpiring, I guarantee you 90 percent or better DQs at the corners for cutting the inside lane line.
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