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Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Reminds me of a SciFi story I read, where the people with good vison were required to wear glasses that made their vision worse, and fast runners were hobbled and smart people had to wear headphones playing loud distracting sounds. The goal was an equal society.
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"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. It's widely available online, but I doubt that it's authorized, so I'm not linking.
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Rather than embarrassing and basically punishing the child in a thoroughly unprofessional manner, she could have made a rule that the previous years winner could not compete for a year, or made part of the prize a job assisting with next years contest and thus disqualified him. Or perhaps not spoken to the press without first engaging her brain.
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Agreed.
She could declare this child a "5-Time Champion!," give him a special award, and say he's ineligible for future contests... unless they start holding some for just the champions.
It's appalling to tell a child, "You're too good at this. You win too much. Stop competing so other people can win something. Of course, they won't do as well as you did, but we don't actually care about rewarding the people who can do this best."
Switching to a name-in-a-hat drawing would be a travesty. There are polite ways to say "previous winners aren't eligible" without removing all the competition.