It looks like they’re actually tier 1 (they seem to be standing on a white platform), but what, if any, weight is each layer above them? I can see narrow platforms, but are they all taking most of the weight?
I’m not sure whether this was meant as an athletic or purely aesthetic display – since they’re billed as ‘acrobats’, I assumed skill was involved, so what would be the best and worst case scenario those 8-10 in the narrowest tier would be supporting?
e: was there any kind of structural support in this? I’m not finding much about it.
Here’s a Snopes article about this event at the 1980s Olympics in Moscow.
As said by many, there’s a hidden structure that supports everyone here. So every athlete is only supporting themselves.
If you want to see people supporting each other in a tower structure search for Catalonian Castells.
Yep these are insane, and really dangerous.
They are not so dangerous, in more than 200 years there are only 5 deaths documented as of 2016 1 (I can’t find a more recent source), and as of 2023 there were 79 potentially severe lesions for 5337 castells 2.
Oh wow that’s indeed way less than I would’ve thought. Still dangerous IMO but clearly the people doing it are very good at it.
Yeah, if you zoom in, you can see metal posts between the legs of the athletes at that level. I can’t discern any other structure at other levels, but at least the guys on the outwards-facing level can’t be bearing much weight on their rear-stretched arms, even if they’re doing it entirely through tension. The women at the bottom are mostly hiding the platform level 2.5 is at.
It’s a nice display, regardless! I also like the subtle, probably unintended metaphor of all of those people at the heights - mostly layers of men - standing on a supporting base of women. The other metaphor is that the masses are being held up by a few strong men, which is dumb. And I honestly believe this is a purely aesthetic display, and that the metaphors I’m seeing are entirely of my own construction.