tingilinde

an uneven playing field

Chris Hayes and Howard Bryant talk about racism and politics in sport - an interesting discussion.  Here's a link to the episode (I listen on a dedicated podcast app)  about an hour.

 

 

a ski wax that damages the environment

Cross-country skiers love what it does for their skiing, but fluorinated ski waxes damage the environment and are being banned in Europe. 

 

 

cheating

The NY Times piece on the sign stealing done by baseball's Houston Astros is interesting (even though I'm not a baseball fan).  Just how is "fair" interpreted goes to many sports. Also interesting is the key figure was a management consultant at McKinsey before working with the Astros

snip

...

After nearly 80 interviews by M.L.B.’s investigation department during its inquiries into the sign-stealing scandal and Mr. Taubman’s outburst, Mr. Manfred wrote that while Mr. Luhnow (“one of the most successful baseball executives of his generation”) had ushered in the “second ‘analytics’ revolution in baseball” and capably rebuilt the Astros, the team’s culture became “insular,” “one that valued and rewarded results over other considerations” and lacked sufficient oversight.

...

 

explaining baseball's home run burst

A physiochemical look at the makeup of baseballs over a four year period. Evidence for change.

 

Physicochemical Investigation into Major League Baseballs in the Era of Unprecedented Rise in Home Runs

 

Nathan Beals Liping Zhang Meng Law Darryl Hwang Jay Acharya Soumitra Basu

Abstract

A major attraction of baseball is the home run. Throughout baseball’s history, some seasonal increases in home run numbers have been tied to external influences, such as lowering the pitching mound or a change in the ball manufacturer. In Major League Baseball, a recent surge in home runs has led to speculation about the baseball being “juiced” or altered in a way to make it fly farther. To support multiple academic and journalistic studies, which have attempted to find evidence of the changes in the flight of the baseball, a systematic chemical analysis has been reported on the multicomponent baseballs. Thus, we undertook a study where we analyzed the core of the baseball using various chemical and physical techniques. Studies using computed tomography scans revealed that there is a drastic 56.7% difference in the density of the core of the baseballs used during the 2014 and pre-All-Star Game 2015 versus 2017 season in the Major League. Increased material porosity was observed using electron microscopy. Thermogravimetric and elemental analyses of the pill material showed a 7% difference in the ratio of organic to inorganic material and almost a 10% decrease in silicon, respectively. Overall, the data indicates a difference in the core of the baseballs between the two time periods, leaving the contribution of these measured differences in the explosion of home runs open to interpretation.

 

 

 

most entertaining

The award for the most entertaining female beach volleyball player on the world tour went to Laura Ludwig of Germany.  This short video makes a good case.

what olympic track bikes cost?

Rules mean that anything has to be available to the public - so price lists exist.

This is specific to this particular sport, but it makes you wonder what equipment for other sports go for...

 

sarah and mel

Sarah is a friend

trying to save football

I'd be very very skeptical of improved helmets being good enough, but here's what's being done.

It should probably be noted that pro rugby dramatically decreased consussions and head injuries with a few rule changes.

 

 

a friend gets some well-deserved recognition

Every once and awhile a friend does something special so it's only proper to note it.

This time it's Sarah Pavan

Here's a short video compilation posted to Twitter.

And later her teammate Melissa Humana-Paredes was named the best defender in the world and together they're the best team in the world. 

here's Mel's video compilation.

the full women's world champion gold medal match is here

 

the astros and cheating

A good piece in The New Republic on the Astros' way and cheating - in line with what seems to be the American way

snip

...

It is still true that no organization in baseball works harder to gather more data, or parse it more effectively, than the Astros. They are likely to receive a fairly severe punishment, by MLB standards, for the cheating they’ve done. Still, the organization itself and the values it has evinced—in the absence of what are conventionally understood to be values—seem unlikely to change. The people in charge will continue to work on solving the problems they care about and continue not caring about the rest. There’s no reckoning coming, but there is something perversely satisfying and darkly apropos about seeing where all those McKinsey-scented insights and learnings (to use another corporate consultancy term of art) wound up. All those merciless cullings and endless organizational refinements, all that data and all the brilliant minds and machines working it over, all resolving to some underpaid grunt in a folding chair whaling away on a garbage can because the members of the team’s brain trust of thoroughbred data nerds simply took it for granted that they could get away with it. All that data, all those numbers, all those shifting variables continually delivered the same answer: What are you going to do, stop us?

...

a tip of the hat to John