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Be it doping in sport, hot topics like Caster Semenya or Oscar Pistorius, or the dehydration myth, we try to translate the science behind sports and sports performance. Consider a donation if you like what you see here!
September, 2008 // Posts published in September, 2008
2008 Berlin Marathon
This Sunday sees the first of the Autumn marathons, and it’s a big one, with Haile Gebrselassie making a big effort on his own, 1-year old record in the Berlin time-trial…er, Marathon. Whenever an athlete of Geb’s caliber lines up, the talk of world records is inevitable, but this particular race is even more in […]
The Paralympics: What to make of it?
Last week saw the curtain call of the Olympic cycle for four years, and the Paralympic Games came to an end amidst a spectacular closing ceremony. It brought to an end the biggest Paralympic Games to date – in terms of atheltes, support staff, media coverage, and financial incentives (both direct and indirect for athletes), […]
Coyle continued
Well, the discussion around the study published by Coyle on Lance Armstrong, and the subsequent revelation that he had made a calculation error has opened up some strong debate, which is always excellent. We’ve had numerous responses, and of course had the study been done on John Jones, as opposed to Lance Armstrong, no one […]
Coyle-Armstrong research installment 2
Apologies for the gap between posts – I wanted to spend more time on this particular piece to make sure that I captured what is a technical matter accurately. In , we looked at the 2005 research study published by Coyle on Lance Armstrong, in which he concluded that Armstrong’s efficiency had improved by 8% […]
Coyle and Armstrong: Research “errors” evaluation
As promised, we turn our attention to this story, which broke last week, coinciding with the news that Lance Armstrong is coming out of retirement and will try to race the 2009 Tour de France. It’s quite an intricate story, and technical, so forgive the longish post, but we try to go back to the […]
Usain Bolt 9.55s? Yeah, right
Yesterday, the news wires were buzzing with the news that scientists in Oslo predicted that Usain Bolt, Jamaica’s triple Olympic champ, would have run 9.55 seconds had he not celebrated prematurely in his 100m final in Beijing. It was on the radios, internet, TV news, all over. A while back, just after that race, we […]
Sports news: Athletics and Paralympics
Apologies for the break, it’s been a busy time at work and the world of sport has taken a backseat, unfortunately. Only in our pages, because it’s actually been a very busy time in the world of sport. Athletics – Golden delight and heartache in the fallout from Beijing The world’s best athletes headed straight […]
The Olympic Games Medals analysis
302 gold medals were handed out in Beijing. Add to that 303 silvers, and 353 bronze medals, and you get a total of 958 medals won during the 16-days of Olympic competition. When you consider that 10,500 athletes were in Beijing, then it’s actually quite interesting to calculate that on average, one in 11 athletes […]
Olympic Oscars Part 2
Yesterday we did the first our Olympic recap “awards” post, which we continue today, in our look back on the Games and some of the stories we might not have covered during the actual Games. The distance award Since we have a preference for the distance events, we can’t let this go without giving special […]