You usually only see Mino Raiola as an extra in photographs: a fat little man with owlish glasses dressed in slobby leisurewear, pictured talking into one of his phones while an overdressed footballer loafs behind him. Yet Juventus fans waiting outside their team’s medical centre last Wednesday, hoping for a glimpse of new signing Matthijs de Ligt, understood the superagent’s importance.
When Raiola showed up, they chanted “Mino!” You could see why, too: with several of Europe’s biggest clubs vying to sign the 19-year-old Ajax captain, the decision to join Juve was arguably made as much by Raiola as by his client.
To understand this transfer, you need to understand Raiola’s thinking, which isn’t all about money despite what some people might think.
… The American record holder in the steeplechase, who will line up in the event this weekend at the USA Outdoor Championships in Des Moines, Iowa, never became distracted from the sports that were her primary focus throughout her adolescence: Gymnastics and soccer.
Frerichs, a graduate of Nixa High School in Missouri, never competed in a state track meet in high school and collapsed before the finish line of her state meet in cross country. Her high school track experience was limited to the 800m (2:24.94) and the triple jump (34-5.5) — performances that were hardly harbingers of future success.
But recent research into athletic development has opened the door to the possibility that the Missouri native may be less of an enigma and rather a good example for a new paradigm shift for athletes in youth and high school sports, particularly young female distance runners.
The Conversation, Ryan Snelgrove and Daniel Wigfield from
… In 2014, soccer teams that were affiliated with the Ontario Soccer Association (since 2017 known as Ontario Soccer) eliminated score-keeping and standings, and also restricted travel, for athletes under 12.
In so doing, the association essentially removed competition from games involving players under 12. The shift was part of what was called a long-term player development strategy.
Some psychologists have argued that a focus on skill development may be more beneficial than competition for children in sports before age 10. They say this shift lets children develop the necessary spatial cognition and other motor skills needed to successfully navigate the complexities of rules and how to play competitively. Parents and coaches are reminded that for children to successfully compete in sport they must have learned how to co-operate.
Some see less competition at younger ages as a necessary response to the values of a more child-responsive and inclusive society — and cut-throat competitive sport cultures. But others simply think the sports are under threat.
Many believe that ‘talent’ runs in the family, but unfortunately, few studies have objectively examined this common belief. Whilst it is well-known that genetic factors provide the blueprint for a good athlete, there are many other factors such as opportunities, nurture, education, and health and wellbeing that also play a part. This study examined how a parent’s previous involvement in sport as a child athlete is related to the eventual level of competitive sport attained by their children.
… Innovating is important in one of three situations you might find yourself in heading into next season. First, you may have hit a plateau in which last season your skiing, results, and points didn’t improve or decline, they just stayed about the same as before. Clearly, you have gotten stuck in your development and continuing to do what you did last season will only cause you to remain stuck. Remember Einstein’s Law of Insanity: “Doing the same thing and expecting different results.”
Second, you may have had a disappointing season in which your skiing, results, and points went backwards. Not only did you not improve, but you actually got worse. And the higher you climb in the rankings, the more likely this becomes as evidenced by many racers on or near the U.S. Ski Team. It seems self-evident that if you keep doing what you did last year, next season isn’t likely to get better either.
Third, you had a great season, with big improvements in your skiing, results, and points. In this scenario, the natural tendency is to think that if it worked last year, let’s keep doing it. This could be a mistake.
A new study finds that your “critical speed” threshold drops in the last third of a marathon, which may explain why the distance produces so many blow-ups
Looking to unite the worlds of startups, tennis and sport in Australia, Tennis Australia has announced an innovative new partnership between with US-based platform Techstars, LaunchVic and Victoria University.
The Techstars SportsTech Melbourne Accelerator aims to revolutionise Australian sport by asking startup companies from around the world to submit what they see as being the ‘next big idea’.
Introducing the partnership, Tennis Australia Chief Executive Craig Tiley (pictured) stated “strategically for some years, Tennis Australia has placed great emphasis on internal capability and the ability to pivot quickly to ensure we continue to grow the sport and our events.
Two super-powers in athlete management software have announced a ground-breaking merger combining performance and analytics with electronic medical records to serve some of the world’s largest sports franchises across the NBA, Premier League, MLS, AFL, NFL, NCAA and EFL. The new entity will also be responsible for carrying out six league-wide contracts to provide athlete management solutions to the likes of the MLB, ATP and CFL in what are landmark deals for the sports technology sector.
London-based EDGE10 and Montreal-based Athlete RMS have joined forces under the newly expanded corporation EDGE10 Group, the first to consolidate the two specialties under an ambitious strategic growth plan.
Everyone’s heart is different. Like the iris or fingerprint, our unique cardiac signature can be used as a way to tell us apart. Crucially, it can be done from a distance.
It’s that last point that has intrigued US Special Forces. Other long-range biometric techniques include gait analysis, which identifies someone by the way he or she walks. This method was supposedly used to identify an infamous ISIS terrorist before a drone strike. But gaits, like faces, are not necessarily distinctive. An individual’s cardiac signature is unique, though, and unlike faces or gait, it remains constant and cannot be altered or disguised.
Maxim Integrated introduced two sensors for health and fitness that require lower power to monitor temperature and heart rate.
The MAXM86161 in-ear heart-rate monitor takes up 40% less space for continuous heart and Sp02 measurements. It is designed to help product developers cover a wide range of use cases, both in-ear and elsewhere.
The MAXM86161 consumes 35% lower power than competing products to expand battery life and has an integrated analog front end, to eliminate the need for procuring a separate chip to connect to an optical module.
Probiotics have been explored in an exponentially increasing number of clinical trials for their health effects. Drawing conclusions from the published literature for the medical practitioner is difficult since rarely more than two clinical trials were conducted with the same probiotic strain against the same medical condition. Consequently, the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN) made a few recommendations restricting it to probiotic use against acute gastroenteritis and antibiotic-associated diarrhea. Recent studies also made a strong case for probiotic use against sepsis in preterm and term infants from developing countries. Conclusions on the value of probiotics are best based on detailed meta-analyses (MA) of randomized controlled trials (RCT). Outcomes of MA are discussed in the present review for a number of gastroenterology conditions. Since these MA pool data from trials using different probiotic species, large RCT published sometimes come to different conclusions than MA including these studies. This is not necessarily a contradiction but may only mean that the specific probiotic species did not work under the specified conditions. Positive or negative generalization about probiotics and prebiotics should be avoided. Credible effects are those confirmed in independent trials with a specified probiotic strain or chemically defined prebiotic in a specified patient population under the specified treatment conditions. Even distinct technological preparations of the same probiotic strain might affect clinical outcomes if they alter bacterial surface structures. Underpowered clinical trials are another problem in the probiotic field. Data obtained with sophisticated omics technologies, but derived from less than ten human subjects should be interpreted with caution even when published in high impact journals. [full text]
SSRN; Andy Brownback, Alex Imas, Michael Kuhn from
We conduct a pre-registered field experiment with low-income grocery shoppers to study how behavioral interventions can be leveraged to improve the effectiveness of subsidies for healthy food purchases. Our unique design enables us to elicit choices between subsidies and deliver subsidies both before and at the point of purchase. We examine the effect of two non-restrictive changes to the choice environment: giving shoppers greater agency over the choice of subsidies and introducing a waiting period before the shopping trip to prompt deliberation about the subsidy and food purchasing decision. When combined, these changes substantially increase the effectiveness of subsidies, increasing healthy purchases by 61% relative to a restricted healthy food subsidy and 199% relative to an un-subsidized control group. Given the low cost and potential scalability of our interventions, our findings have significant implications for policy and intervention design.
… it feels like the Rays are an extremely divisive franchise, even among baseball nerds: On one hand, they’re the team that exploits market inefficiencies and finds ways to win despite limited resources — that whole Moneyball thing we all fetishized 15 years ago. On the other, they’re an operation working to find ways to keep MLB’s billions of dollars of revenue out of the pockets of the actual guys who hit the dingers and throw the 100-mph two-seamers. There’s no glory in nuance, so the hot take is either that the Rays are baseball’s most brilliant organization or that the Rays are cheap, cash-grabbing brutes dedicated to taking money owed to baseball players.
When the Rays do something like, say, using a position player to pitch the ninth inning when they’re only down by five runs, one chorus will sing about how they had less than a 1% probability of winning that game and going to Mike Brosseau in that spot was a smart way to keep their actual relievers rested for contests that are still within reach. Another group will insist that they’re insulting both Brosseau and Major League Baseball by putting a position player in a non-blowout game just because they don’t want to pay an actual reliever who can shoulder that burden.
The big picture: Monumental Basketball gives off the impression of a forward-thinking vision. Whether it will actually produce results remains to be seen, but in the interim, I do think it points to two larger trends in both sports and society.
1. A commitment to diversity: “The only way you can get [a] competitive advantage is to try to get that added value from diversity,” Leonsis told USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt. … 2. A desire for fresh, new ideas: During his time in Cleveland, Sashi Brown worked alongside Paul DePodesta, a longtime baseball executive of “Moneyball” fame who is now the Browns’ chief strategy officer.