The Stanford Daily student newspaper, Sophie Kroesche from
… Ledecky will continue to study psychology and train with her coach and teammates for the remainder of her time at Stanford. While maintaining student-athlete status is itself a challenge, Ledecky now must be able to manage the long hours of school and practice combined with new professional responsibilities once the fall quarter begins.
Becoming a professional athlete often affords more opportunities to interact with sports apparel companies that improve performance. Christine Brennan, the USA Today sports columnist who wrote the National Geographic cover story, explains how the development of high-tech track shoes, better time-keeping and even racing swimsuits contributes to the advancement in sports standards.
Like many professional athletes, Ledecky works with a company who develops sports apparel designed to cut racing times and improve performance. She partnered with the brand, TYR Sport, on June 8 and will continue the contract until the Paris Summer Olympics in 2024.
A week or so ago, when asked whether a calf injury had set back his rehabilitation from the oblique injury he suffered in May, Ryan Zimmerman said it hadn’t. He also said everybody had been asking him that. He didn’t know why. The rumor mill had been churning that one out since spring training, but no one could seem to get the story straight.
When a report on FanCred Sports surfaced suggesting otherwise, Zimmerman didn’t change his answer. No, he does not have a calf injury. He has been out with oblique trouble. He doesn’t know where that came from.
But the most important question here is not whether Zimmerman’s calf or side or even his left ear is keeping him out. Whatever the problem, he is healed enough to be starting a rehab assignment Monday — a plan Manager Dave Martinez said was concrete.
The most important question is why, if an oblique injury was complicated by calf trouble, or if his right nostril was really the cause of the trouble all along, would anyone feel a need to lie about it?
Saquon Barkley could be throwing a first pitch, running over a defender or hitting a golf ball. It doesn’t matter. Muscles seemingly protrude from his quads as if he’s the Incredible Hulk, no matter the task.
It’s the inevitable consequence of having tree trunks pose as limbs. There is a reason Barkley can squat 650 pounds, clean more than 400 pounds and holds just about every record for a running back in the Penn State weight room.
Barkley has 28-inch quads, according to Tom Marchitelli, the owner of Gentleman’s Playbook Custom Suits, who fitted Barkley for his draft day suit. Marchitelli said that is bigger than most of his clients who are linebackers.
The plan was for 2017 to be my last season. I was 34, had a great career, accomplished a lot—it was time. No one ever expected my career to last this long, over a decade but I was proud to prove them all wrong. Then my season ended a little earlier than expected, to an injury.
An injury is different; It’s something you don’t have any control over but I feel like I left a lot out there, and I couldn’t let my career end like that.
Coming back from any injury is tough—especially a knee injury for a running back. I wondered if I was going to come back the same, if I would still have my quickness. That’s the main thing because I don’t want to go out there and start getting smacked. Once I started rehabbing and running again I could tell I was good and ready for one more healthy year.
At my size, people often ask me how I’ve managed a decade plus long career in this league and I tell them the secret is simple— don’t get hit. Football is a collision sport so getting my agility back was key to my decision to play one more year.
England’s national team at the 2018 World Cup Finals was the youngest and least experienced, yet the young English squad emerged as one of the top teams in the tournament, winning their way to the semi-final against Croatia.
Looking back on my recent conversation with Fulham Football Club scout Glan Letheren, England’s philosophy towards youth academies became more clear.
I asked Letheren why it seems that so many American youth players go to other European countries and not England. He explained, “The governments’ rules for sporting work visas are a lot more lenient in other countries. England, though, is one of the strongest when it comes to European Sporting Visas [for youth players]. Other countries have different rules and regulations, but England is the most strict.”
… It has been reported that less than 1% of boys who enter academies before the age of 14 will ever make it to the professional level of the game. This already sets Gary Cahill, Fabien Delph, Harry Maguire, Jamie Vardy, Danny Rose, John Stones and Kyle Walker apart from the majority of boys who want to succeed in British football.
Now consider their transition into the professional game. Recent research from Sheffield Hallam University suggests that around 30% of players are able to convert their scholarship contract (a contract signed for two years between the ages of 16 and 18) into a professional contract once it expires.
However, the academy that a player is employed at during those years plays an important role in the chances of them entering professional football. Of our sample of 303 players, for example, only 11 players who were with academies connected to League One or League Two clubs gained a professional contract. In comparison to this, 82 of the players who were at academies at Premier League and Championship clubs were awarded professional contracts at 18.
Canada Sport Information Resource Center, SIRCuit, Andrea Wooles from
… Over the past decade, the concept has caused teams to chase every tiny gain available relating to nutrition, physiology, psychology, aerodynamics, and strength and conditioning. Olympic sports have looked to outside organizations and industries for things like data collection and analysis, aerodynamics, and even team management. For example, BAE Systems partnered with UK Sport to develop a high-tech ergometer for British Cycling. British Cycling has implemented a number of advances that built on knowledge and experience from Formula 1 racing, including a data collection “burger van” that sits permanently in the track centre at the Manchester Velodrome. Another area of substantial development across many sports has been with the analysis and interpretation of training data using specific software. Team Sky, for instance, partnered with Today’s Plan to develop their own customized version of the training software. This past decade sports have taken a huge step forward through innovation, much of it driven by partnerships with external experts with world-leading expertise in related areas that had never before been applied to sport.
In some cases, this drive for innovation has led to a perception that some teams are functioning almost robotically, with formulas and processes underlying every decision. In truth, sport is still about people and how to get the best out of them, so no algorithm or protocol will ever win a race. Regardless, the exploration of how and what to optimize within a sport is a fascinating approach to improving performance.
Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, remembers asking an undergraduate seminar recently, “How many of you are waiting to find your passion?”
“Almost all of them raised their hand and got dreamy looks in their eyes,” she told me. They talked about it “like a tidal wave would sweep over them,” he said. Sploosh. Huzzah! It’s accounting!
Would they have unlimited motivation for their passion? They nodded solemnly.
“I hate to burst your balloon,” she said, “but it doesn’t usually happen that way.”
AthleticDirectorU; Matt R. Huml, N David Pifer, Caitlin Towle, Cheryl Rode from
… If a school builds a new athletic facility, does its recruiting improve after the facility is constructed? Does it see an improvement after the new facility is under construction? For us, these were important questions considering (1) how optimistic many athletic department stakeholders are about how facilities will be a difference maker in recruiting circles and (2) how expensive these facilities can be. It’s easy to say that prominent donors are footing a large portion of the bill (true in many cases, false in many others as athletic departments can also pursue bonds to pay for the project in the long-term). In the best-case scenario, it commits precious donor dollars to certain projects that may not make an actual difference on the recruiting trail, while leaving other projects unfunded.
UC’s Nanoworld Laboratories collaborates with the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army and NASA to investigate new uses for carbon nanotubes in military uniforms and fabric that can double as batteries.
When the clock approaches 12:01 a.m. on July 1 each year, and free agency begins, NBA fans anxiously await the floodgates to open. It feels like the kickoff of an event, the start gun to a race going off.
But for NBA teams, behind the scenes, it’s not quite a sprint but a steady rollout of a process for which they have planned for months.
“For a lot of teams it’s not terribly thrilling,” Los Angeles Clippers GM Michael Winger told Business Insider.
“For process-driven front offices, all of the preparation at that point has mostly been done and, frankly, had been done for months.”
… Every side has video analysts, but none have had quite the same insight as Croatia—the only team in Russia using STATS Edge.
The Chicago-based tech firm has been tracking football data since 1999 and in June launched a new football platform that uses artificial intelligence to analyse a team’s performance, compare playing styles and conduct game-changing set-play analysis. You can even start to predict how an opponent might react to a specific scenario based on their past behaviour.
… Sixteen of the 23 players on the team come from families that recently immigrated to France from places like Zaire, Cameroon, Morocco, Angola, Congo or Algeria. Forward Antoine Griezmann, the team’s leading scorer, is half-German and half-Portuguese. Defender Samuel Umtiti, who scored the goal that sent France to the final, was born in Cameroon. Teenage prodigy Kylian Mbappe is part Cameroonian, part Algerian.
Even captain Hugo Lloris, the goalkeeper, traces his recent roots to Spain. And France is going to need contributions from all of them against a Croatian team whose players, seared in a bloody civil war, have refused to lose in this World Cup, winning all three of their knockout-stage games in extra time or penalty kicks.
“Football,” Yvan Gastaut, a University of Nice historian, told the Associated Press, “allows us to put immigration on stage, a question that is agitating European countries right now.