In Wellington, New Zealand, Primary Sport Wellington is “the organisation responsible for overseeing sport for its 64 member primary schools within Wellington City.” Their Interzone Athletics is held every year, and they just had one a few days ago.
The interesting thing is that they don’t have any sort of artificial footwear rules, so the kids run in what they want to. And for many of them, that means bare feet.
I found these on Flickr, on Jojo Ez’s photostream.
First up, “Waiting Lines”:
Sprinting:
Who says bare feet are slower? (Girls’ edition):
Who says bare feet are slower? (Boys’ edition):
You know, I doubt there are very many places in the United States where schools would allow this. Those in authority would always manage to think up some irrational rationalization why not.
Well, well, Wellington. Very well indeed.
Well indeed! Great pick Bob! I always love the positive stories about barefooting, and this is everything I could ask for. From what I have read, going barefoot as a child is seen as a tradition in New Zealand. I have evey heard some people refer to the children as “Barefoot Kiwis”, kind of cute, huh?
I would love to see this happen in the US. Who knows, maybe.
Wow, great pictures. I look a bit slower in my race photos…
Part of what is going on in NZ is that liability is not on their radar. From what I heard, personal injury lawsuits do not exist in NZ. Their national healthcare simply pays 100 percent for whatever injury they have, and that is it. The US is too paranoid about liability, so any perceived “safety” problem, real or imagined, will be addressed by rules, rules, and more rules.
@Beach Bum. That’s a good point. One wonders just how much money this country wastes screwing around deciding liability instead of just fixing the injury. But I also worry, with all the busybodies around, if national health care might lead to restrictions on any sort of activity considered dangerous. We see that already with smoking and obesity, with companies trying to force such health decisions on employees to get health insurance (yet, from what I’ve read, smokers are cheaper to insure, in the long run, because they die early and don’t need long-term advanced-age care).
As a Wellingtonian who has just moved to Chicago I was struck dumb by the strange attitude to bare feet here! My first experience of this was standing in line at the store in the basement of my apartment building and having a guy I’ve never met ask me: “dude where are your shoes?!” I could only really stumble out a reply that I was just walking around, just like everybody else.
Nobody would think anything of it back home. I could walk down to the shops, around the city or up a trail without anyone giving it a second thought. If I want to wear shoes, I will, and if I don’t, I won’t. It’s really just a matter of convenience and comfort, especially in summer, when you’d tend to look like a total idiot wearing shoes or any kind of footwear on the way down to the beach.
So the interesting thing from my perspective is that you find these photos interesting at all! This is totally normal in New Zealand.
And just to test that theory, I looked up photos from my (fairly traditional) old high school: http://www.pnbhs.school.nz/category/image-galleries/athletics-2011?page=0%2C0 See especially the marching photos, where shoes are not allowed at all.
You should at least move to the coastal areas of the US, and then you will get somewhat less of an attitude, and occasionally see others doing the same. You would need a time machine to go back 35 to 40 years in order to see here what you see now in NZ. Though most schools other than colleges did not allow bare feet then either, for that you would have to back even further in time….
I know the barefoot girl in green in the “Who says bare feet are slower? (Girls’ edition)” photo!
She was my classmate!
Her name is Jessica Swain.