Society

Maclean’s staffers are just like Olympic athletes, sort of

Find out what Olympian you resemble most in height and weight. We did, with mixed results

Maclean's assistant editor Emma Teitel most resembles tae kwon do athlete Yulis Mercedes Reyes, a Dominican male (Photograph on right by Henry Romero/Reuters)

It takes an elite group of diverse individuals to put out a magazine week to week. From the art and photo departments to editors and writers to the production and web teams. In fact, it’s not dissimilar to the variety of athletes who compete in the Olympics.

The BBC launched a terrific tool on their website where you enter your height and weight to find out your Olympic athlete body match. For example, I most resemble a female weight-lifter from Ecuador.

I thought it might be interesting to see if any deductions could be made, using graphs, math, and no science, regarding the Olympic athlete body matches of the staff here at Maclean’s: Are the interns like dreamy, young Peruvian sailors? Is our own web team akin to Romanian target shooters? Are the editors all hammer throwers? So I invited my colleagues to take a minute to enter their stats.

The results are…varied. Many found that their match was of the opposite sex. And, at times, we seem to be a stalky bunch–all the best, said one editor, for wrangling writers. We have the most footballers (just three) and two each of cyclists, rowers, volleyball players, sailors and the hammer throwers.

While 11 out of the 28 participants came out as British athletes–that’s 39.3 per cent (math)–no one at this national newsweekly resembled a Canadian Olympian in height and weight. But this isn’t a scientific test so there are no hard feelings.

In any case, here are the results:

Editors

  • Russian female shotputter
  • Japanese male footballer
  • British male hammer thrower
  • Italian male cyclist
  • British female handball player
  • Argentinian female hockey player

Writers

  • British male judo -100kg
  • American male volleyball player
  • Romanian male water polo player
  • British female triathlete
  • Dominican male tae kwon do

Art

  • Italian male shooter (double trap)
  • British male rower
  • British male football player

Photo

  • British female rower
  • British male hockey player
  • British male mountain biker

Production

  • Luxembourgian female table tennis player
  • Finnish female hammer thrower
  • Peruvian female sailor

Web

  • Ecuadorian female weight-lifter
  • British female volleyball player
  • American female hockey player
  • American male sprinter

Interns

  • South Korean male footballer
  • Puruvian female laser radical (that’s a sailor)
  • British male cyclist
  • Australian female field hockey player

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