Debate continues to rage over the effectiveness of Kinesio Tape, the colorful substance so many London Olympians, Tour de France cyclists, and other super-people are swearing by to reduce pain from sports injuries. Like soccer's mystery spray, the rash-like stuff seems to pop up everywhere, and has received significant press attention and a lot of skepticism. The athletes, who just want to win, don't seem to care about the polemic, and plenty seem to think the tape helps. It's started to show up on horses. What's less understood is how it became so omnipresent. "Kiniseo Taping" is a ... Read More
Why Writers Run
August 8, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
New Yorker editor Nicholas Thompson and staff writer Malcolm Gladwell have been bantering about running and the Olympics. In their—so far—four part series they talk about everything from doping to bar fights to Toni Kukoc (trust me, it all makes sense in context). For me, the best part has been learning that Thompson is a 2:40 marathoner, Gladwell is a former cross country runner, and Peter Hessler, another New Yorker staff writer, has a 2:38 marathon PR. Running writers are not that uncommon it seems. (Of course there are some fabulous exceptions: try and picture Hemingway going ... Read More
How Fast Is Usain Bolt?
August 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Yesterday Usain Bolt won the Men’s 100-meter final in 9.63 seconds. He is faster than an elephant (but slightly slower than a housecat). He is the fastest man on two legs, and by some accounts is "the most naturally gifted athlete the world has ever seen." But how does he stack up against other Olympic speedsters? Over at Engineering Sport, a blog of British engineers, Leon Foster tracked the average speeds of various individual Olympic sports. Bolt (23.4 mph) sits right in the middle of the pack; faster than freestyle swimmers (5.3 mph), rowers (11.36 mph) and triathletes (18.2 mph), but ... Read More
North Korea is Winning the Olympics
July 31, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
In an Olympic showdown that Jimmy Kimmel is presumably writing jokes about this very second, North Korea's An Kum-Ae beat Cuba's champion Yanet Bermoy for gold in women’s judo over the weekend. She also made North Korea the most successful nation in the current London Olympics—at least by one statistician’s measure. One of the numbers-minded political scientists at Mischiefs of Faction, Seth Masket, argues at his personal blog today that we should measure success at the Olympics not by the gross number of gold medals a country wins—China is winning that race so ... Read More
Olympics Popular, But No World Cup
July 27, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Sure, the Olympics opening ceremonies draw a huge audience. A record 1.4 billion tuned in to see the spectacle in Beijing in 2008. But when it comes to fans watching actual sporting events, the Olympics pulls a bronze medal at best. Sound the vuvuzelas for the gold: Viewers of the 2010 World Cup football, er, soccer, match in South Africa numbered 2.2 billion. ... Read More
Female Olympians Sidetracked from Prime Time TV
July 26, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
When it comes to gender-neutral coverage, NBC’s prime-time Olympics telecast is no medalist. That’s the conclusion of two newly published studies looking at the American television network’s prime-time coverage of the most recent summer and winter Olympics. One reported female athletes were marginalized during the 2010 winter Olympics, receiving only 37.8 percent of prime-time coverage. The other found they did significantly better during the 2008 summer Olympics, receiving 46.3 percent of air time during the broadcast network’s evening programming. However, that figure was ... Read More
Men Dominate Olympics TV Coverage
July 31, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
A new analysis of NBC's prime-time Olympics coverage shows male athletes receive more air time than women, but the discrepancy is much greater for the winter games than the summer ones. Andrew C. Billings of Clemson University clocked all 348 prime-time hours of Olympics coverage from 1996 through 2006 — three Summer Olympics and three Winter Olympics. He found that “men athletes and their respective sports were shown a slight majority of the time in each of the three Summer Olympics telecasts, with an overall split of 51.9 percent for men’s events and 48.1 percent for women’s ... Read More
Research in Summary
July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
No one gives out medals for Olympics-related research. But that hasn’t stopped scholars from using the games as a springboard to study everything from terrorism to traffic patterns. Type the term “Olympic Games” into Google’s Scholar directory, and 57,300 entries come up. To commemorate this month’s Beijing Games, we present a few of the more interesting Olympics-related research papers of recent times. Home-Field Advantage Do athletes competing in Olympic events in their home countries have an advantage over their competitors from abroad? Several studies suggest the answer is ... Read More
The Sugar High Jump
June 18, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
With summer comes sporting festivals and their attendant commerce. Besides July’s Tour de France tchotchke caravan and sponsorship mega deals during the August Olympics in Beijing, spectators will see the end result of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions made to facilitate doping. The big money goes to illicit doping experts, such as those exposed in California’s BALCO case and Spain’s Operación Puerto police raid against a lab run by doping Svengali Eufemiano Fuentes. Their high fees came from a reputation earned helping athletes produce results while evading anti-doping ... Read More
Just How Bad Is the Air in Beijing?
May 15, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
As the build-up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing continues, the city's poor air quality remains a subject of great concern to athletes, organizers and Chinese government officials. One British marathoner has even suggested she'll train in a gas mask if necessary. Since the 1980s, the city has experienced rapid industrial development, urbanization and increased traffic. Pollution from coal-fired power plants and emissions from slow-moving gas guzzlers have combined to cast a dun-colored haze over Beijing and its sprawling suburbs. But a new study by Chinese scientists, led by ... Read More
