Way back in 2006, I started this website in an attempt to offer sports science insights and processes to ongoing sports conversations. The idea was that you’d watch the action on television, read about what happened in the papers, and then we’d have a conversation about “how” and “why”? It was also intended as a platform to translate and communicate sports science in a more engaging and accessible way, and so from time-to-time I did a series, on say, dehydration, or pacing, or talent ID.
Twitter took over as a more accessible and less time-consuming way to share ideas, if considerably less substantial, and if I’m honest, the balance between the two extremes – lengthy 2000 word articles on the website vs 140 (now 280) character posts.
#thefourminutemull is my 2018 attempt to achieve that balance, and also to keep the conversation going more regularly. There’ve been times in the last few years that I’m a firefighter, only showing up when something is burning (usually a doping dumpster fire), and I hope these videos, which I will try to post at least weekly, allow me to escape the insidious news cycle and perhaps focus a little more on the actual sports science.
So this is Episode 1, in which I look ahead to 2018, and the unpleasant reality that sport’s declining credibility is not going to be helped at all by two global sporting show pieces that are the very embodiment of the problems besetting sport, responsible for that tanking cred.
In the video, I refer to a couple of topics that were covered very well in recent articles. Here are links to those:
- Jack Robertson, Wada’s chief investigator in the Russian doping scandal, has this op-ed in the New York Times
- Eamonn Sweeney in the Irish Independent, on the loss of integrity and intelligence in elite sport
There are also other legal battles and (hopefully) resolutions on the horizon – Froome, FBI vs Salazar, IAAF and intersex athletes – and then a bunch of sport and sports science in between. Will the marathon world record finally fall, for instance?
I’m sure it’ll be a busy year, and I hope these videos keep the momentum and conversation going.
Ross