… Just 11 Swiss players have played more than 100 games in the NHL, and all but three were in the league as recently as last season. To put the interest in Hischier in perspective, consider the comments of tennis superstar Roger Federer when asked about his countryman while competing at the U.S. Open earlier this month.
After lauding Hischier and noting his nation’s pride in claiming the up-and-coming hockey talent, Federer, a 19-time Grand Slam winner, concluded by saying, “I hope to meet him someday.”
… A recent photo on Froome’s Instagram, showing him on his ruby red Pinarello wearing nothing but a big smile, has me reaching further into my suitcase of mea culpa. The photo is part of a series from photographer Marc Aspland called “My Sporting Body,” in which athletes pose in their birthday suits and dish a little on how they feel about what they see.
Frankly, Froome looks healthy and happy, lean and chiseled, but hardly emaciated.
Richard Sherman again took shots at the NFL, saying the injury reports that teams are required to produce each week are simply to help gamblers.
Sherman has been listed on the injury report each week this season, first with a thigh injury and then with a hamstring injury. He was not listed at all last year even though Seahawks coach Pete Carroll revealed after the season that Sherman had played through a significant knee injury, which led to concerns that Seattle was not being accurate in its reporting.
Sherman said Wednesday that he believes the injury report is just to help set point spreads on games. “I thought we weren’t a gambling league and we were against all those things. But our injury report is specifically to make sure the gamblers get their odds right,” he said.
… Breaking2’s lead physiologist Brett Kirby, Ph.D., focused on the two elements of Kipchoge’s game that he could obviously control: nutrition and gear.
“Eliud had the opportunity to improve how he managed energy levels during the marathon,” Kirby, a Nike Sport researcher, tells Men’s Fitness. “Two strategies we used to make this happen were 1) personalizing Eliud’s Vaporfly Elite shoes, enabling him to maintain race pace at a lower required oxygen cost, and 2) adjusting the carbohydrate amount in Eliud’s drink during both training and racing so he could preserve stored muscle energy levels for longer durations.”
In addition to winning every possible event this year on the international stage, USA Baseball has taken more steps as a governing body in amateur baseball, attempting to encourage proper youth development and increased participation in the sport.
On Wednesday, USA Baseball announced its Long Term Athlete Development Plan (LTAD), which will attempt to increase participation, aid in performance and try to increase enjoyment of the sport across the country.
According to USA Baseball’s Chief Development Officer, Rick Riccobono, the LTAD was written as a scientific document with input from on-field baseball personnel, off-field baseball personnel, experts in the medical safety industry and sports performance experts in other sports, in an attempt to look at trends in the game comprehensively.
Sounders FC today announced that High Performance Director David Tenney has left the club to join the National Basketball Association’s Orlando Magic in the same role. Tenney, a Sounders FC original that was hired in January of 2009 prior to the organization’s inaugural campaign, has led the club’s sports science and fitness efforts since the club’s inception.
“On behalf of Seattle Sounders FC, we want to thank Dave for nine years of exemplary service within our club,” said Sounders FC General Manager & President of Soccer Garth Lagerwey. “Dave has made an indelible and long-lasting impact as the founder of our sports science program and will be greatly missed. As arguably the best in his field, Dave has been an industry-leader in sports performance during his time in Seattle, and one of his lasting marks is the staff he’s assembled that helps our team perform each and every day. As we wish Dave every success on the next step of his journey in the NBA, we know we’re in capable hands for the remainder of our season with his staff.”
A study of 460 study participants (aged 22-35) from the Human Connectome Project, reported in Nature Neuroscience found a single, stark difference in the way human brains were connected—based on an abundance of positivity or negativity in their lives.
In comparing fMRI brain scans to data collected on approximately 280 behavioral, demographic, and psychometric traits—such as the person’s age, whether they have a history of drug use, their socioeconomic status and personality traits, and their performance on various intelligence tests—researchers found that positive traits and conditions vastly improved brain connectivity and functioning.
EurekAlert! Science News, University of Washington Health Sciences/UW Medicine from
How does a driver’s brain realize that a stop sign is behind a bush when only a red edge is showing? Or how can a monkey suspect that the yellow sliver in the leaves is a round piece of fruit?
The human (and non-human) primate brain is remarkable in recognizing objects when the view is nearly blocked. This skill let our ancient ancestors find food and avoid danger. It continues to be critical to making sense of our surroundings.
UW Medicine scientists are conducting research to discover ways that the brain operates when figuring out shapes, from those that are completely visible to those that are mostly hidden.
NextFlex will once again open the doors to its manufacturing facility in San Jose for its second annual Innovation Day on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Since its inception in 2015 – when the U.S. Dept. of Defense announced a $75-million award to advance the country’s manufacturing ecosystem and workforce for flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) – NextFlex has issued three project calls aimed at bringing FHE solutions to market for a staggering $45 million (including cost-share). This week, NextFlex brings together more than 50 companies, government agencies and universities to demonstrate the technology advances these investments have yielded, as well as other efforts underway in the burgeoning FHE industry.
As the Ravens arrived at the team’s training facility for offseason workouts, cranes loomed overhead and men in hard hats wandered the grounds. A $45 million renovation to upgrade the team facility was underway, a project that would bring a new locker room, new meeting rooms and new offices for the business side. But there was one room that needed to be finished first, in time for the players’ arrival at training camp: the new cafeteria.
“This is where everybody congregates, like a kitchen in your house,” Tenille Moore said, as she gave The MMQB a tour of the cafeteria one day during training camp. “Anyone can come in here, from the grounds crew to the janitor to the players. Anyone.”
So they’re cracking down on slashing in the National Hockey League, which really means they’re challenging the slower player to defend without using his stick as a tool, or weapon.
Which means you’d better be able to get body position. Which really means, you’d better be fast enough because the foot-speed bar just got raised. Again.
Spencer Liang doesn’t remember exactly when it happened or specifics of the match, but she can recall the frustration that boiled up that day on the tennis court years ago.
Engaged in a tight battle against another elite junior tennis player, Liang hit a momentum-changing winner that landed well inside the court for a chance to advance to the next round of a competitive Mid-Atlantic tournament. Her opponent, however, ruled the ball out.
Liang fumed and argued against what she felt was yet another egregious call, one of several in the match that she believed her opponent had made to gain an advantage. But it was no use. The call stood. Eventually, Liang decided to take matters into her own hands. On the next on-the-line shot her opponent hit, Liang raised her index finger to indicate the ball was out — even though, in reality, it was too close to tell. This was payback, Liang figured, her way of leveling the playing field.
… A few weeks ago, McClatchey had his own conventional job, trading real-time energy for Carmel-based ACES. Last week, however, he started what he called “the opportunity of a lifetime” as Purdue basketball’s first statistical analyst.
McClatchey once aspired to be the next Brad Stevens. Now, he hopes to be the Boilermakers’ version of Drew Cannon — the statistics guru who aided the Bulldogs’ breakthrough and followed Stevens to the Boston Celtics.
“This has always kind of been the dream,” McClatchey said. “I initially thought I wanted to get into coaching, but then I realized, I just liked the numbers aspect of it. The analytics was always my calling card.”
… When it comes to predicting run totals, the run prevention side of the equation is probably close to 50 percent more difficult than run scoring. It’s just the nature of pitching, of its uncertain development patterns, susceptibility to injuries, of its still-unclear relationship to the defense around it. Hence, variability. This is what I was thinking about this weekend when I read this old quote from the introductory news conference of Brewers GM David Stearns in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
“I’m a big believer in not setting limits for any team, for any year,” Stearns said. “This is a game with a tremendous amount of variability, and we’re going to take each decision as it comes, and make each decision in the best interests of the overall health of the organization. The product on the field is a large component of that.”