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Well, 2012 is here. At last. It’s been a long wait and it seems like we’ve been talking about 2012 forever. For anyone involved in elite sport it is like a switch has been thrown – I’m only on the periphery and it’s manic so it must be crazy for those at the centre of it all. As part of the celebrations of the role of science in sport, I’ve been working with the Royal Institution in London on a project funded by Research Councils UK (RCUK) to put on a series of 6 events to showcase the UK science community’s efforts behind the scenes. Opened by David Willets MP (the UK Minister for Universities and Science), the first event was held on 25th January at the Royal Institution on the topic of wheelchair basketball (as far as we know the first time wheelchair basketball has featured in the famous Faraday Lecture Theatre).
Not only did the audience learn something new, we found out what the audience thought of science and sport.
Tyler Saunders shoots a perfect basket in the Faraday Lecture Theatre at the Royal Institution.
Our third guest blog article comes from one of the students from our University and concerns the safety of motorsport, specifically in Indycar and Moto GP. Are speeds to high to be safe? Do speeds need to be high in order to maintain a vibrant fan base? It would be great if you could contribute by adding a comment, enjoy the article.
In recent weeks two serious accidents in motor sport have resulted in the tragic death of two very talented individuals. These two events have put into perspective how important success is in sport. The two incidents bring competitor safety to the forefront and question whether safety is given paramount importance or whether it is being overlooked in the pursuit of ever increasing speed, glory and money.
Over the past couple of years I have been quite busy speaking about the role of technology in disability sport at numerous science festivals and conferences. South Africa’s ground breaking decision to select the bi-lateral amputee, Oscar Pistorius, to compete at the IAAF World Championships in South Korea has prompted me to finally write a new blog post on the topic.
I am a huge supporter of disability sport and have been privileged to attend the past two Paralympic Games. I also lead a major Cultural Olympiad project called Extraordinary Moves that aims to challenge perceptions of disability through the creation of a new body of provocative artworks. Furthermore, through academic research I have tried to understand why some performance enhancing technologies are permitted, whilst other are prohibited. Perhaps I am somewhat qualified to comment on this highly emotive issue.
FINA changed the rules on swimsuits on 1st January 2010. This effectively banned full body polyurethane swimsuits which had been blamed for the overwhelming number of world records in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2009 Rome World Championships. Nunzio Lanotte wrote a guest blog on this very subject and concluded that perhaps we shouldn’t worry since overall performances seemed to be continuing anyway. One thing that is only just becoming evident, however, is that records made during the swimsuit era may be difficult to break.
In what seems like no time at all we have our second guest blog ready for consumption (if you fancy writing something get in touch). This piece discusses a piece of sports technology to measure power in weight lifting, enjoy!
“Power is the most desired physical quality for a number of sports because it entails both force (strength) and velocity (speed) aspects.”[1]
Dan Baker – President of the ASCA Brisbane Broncos Strength and Conditioning Coach
Why do we need to measure power in an athlete’s performance? Well, Dan Baker also says:
“Once adequate levels of strength have been attained, training priorities may focus more on increased power… “[2]
The host nation for the 2022 World Cup will be Qatar, a desert country where temperatures in June and July can reach 50 °C. I find it hard to even imagine that level of heat, let alone play football in it! The extreme temperatures are of obvious concern. So, alternative measures are being considered to ensure games at this tournament are not played at extremely high temperatures. These include playing in the winter or more likely building climate controlled stadiums. At present it looks as though 5 brand new climate controlled stadiums will be built. The primary concern is the detrimental affect of extreme heat on human performance. To a lesser extent, temperature is also likely to effect the physical properties of the ball, changing the speed a player can kick it. This blog will explain the effect of temperature on soccer ball dynamics.
Artist's impression of the Lusail Iconic Stadium
This is EngineeringSport’s first guest blog! We are very pleased to present Italian Sports Engineer Nunzio Lanotte’s piece on performance increases in swimming.
We now have the requisite infrastructure to accept guest submissions, so if you would like to submit something please get in touch via our contact us page.
Shanghai 2011 Revisited
The Swimming World Championships held in Shanghai last July were the first major competition (meaning either Long Course World Championships or the Olympic Games) held after FINA (the International Swimming Federation) imposed a ban on full body, Polyurethane swimsuits. In February 2008 the introduction of a new generation of “supersuits” caused not only a revolution in the performance of swimmers, but a bundle of controversy, legal challenges, vitriolic accusations of techno-doping, and terrible headaches for athletes, coaches and companies alike. A detailed report of what someone has called “The year of swimming dangerously” can be found here.
Figure 1. The new roof on Wimbledon's Centre Court has been claimed to slow the ball down, make the ball heavier and make the air more humid, none of which quite adds up (picture from the Guardian, 2009).
The comments made about the new roof over Wimbledon’s Centre Court have puzzled me. The Wall Street Journal and the Times had the headline “Wimbledon Roof Slows Balls Down” while the Daily Mail had “How Centre Court’s new roof puts a dampener on Andy Murray’s serve” (I admit that I’m quoted in this one). One comment suggested that “due to the increase in humidity when the roof is closed, balls are heavier and travel slightly slower through the air“.
Well, I’ve done a lot of work for the International Tennis Federation (ITF) on ball impacts, aerodynamics and surfaces and the comments above are physically contradictory (although not necessarily obvious). I want to explain the contradictions and in the process figure out what happens when the roof closes to make the players complain that the ball is slowing down. Hawkeye data has shown the ball to be travelling up to 5 mph slower when it reaches the reciever if the roof is shut.
Well, it’s all over. And what an amazing day it was. It was exhausting trying to work out who was staying up and what the scenarios were. Here is what happened drawn as a polar time plot of the 5 teams that were in danger of relegation.
Figure 1. 1st Half of Survival Sunday: polar chart of the league table . Teams are identified by their colours with 19th place at the inside and 15th place at the outside. The numbers on the outside indicate minutes and the dotted line shows the relegation zone. (Tip - follow individual teams around the circle to see how they fared during the half.)
Survival Sunday is almost upon us and my earlier post on the number of scenarios appears to have stirred up feelings – see The Premier League: predicting who will go down (and the strange case of scenario no. 55). To recap, there are 5 teams separated by only one point who could all get relegated to the Championship. I calculated that there are 81 possible scenarios based on a simple win, draw or lose. I then worked out the percentage of the scenarios in which the teams went down (see Figure 1 below) such that overall the chances of relegation are Rovers 11%, Wolves 24%, Birmingham 48%, Blackpool 58%, and Wigan 67%.
The main criticism of this approach was that it didn’t take into account goal difference or the number of goals scored. In particular, it was easy to point out that Wigan, say, could significantly improve their chances by scoring a couple of goals at demoralised Stoke. So I decided to have a look at potential scores in the games on Sunday to answer the basic question:
What does my team have to do to escape relegation?
Figure 1. The chances of relegation based upon the number of scenarios out of 81 in which the team goes down.
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