Noah Lyles won the men’s 100m final at the 2024 Olympics, despite not leading for the vast majority of the race. He took poll when it mattered.
Sport
The annual spectacle was devised by the Chicago Tribune, as a way of driving readership – and general spend – during the Great Depression.
The tennis tournament is unable to broadcast live matches on its YouTube channel. So it found a genius workaround: animations. The Wii style players follow all the same movements as their real-life counterparts, while the “whap” of the ball, chatter from the crowd, and commentary all remain authentic.
The football club had no choice but to get creative after high transfer spend, high wages, and the departure of Lionel Messi. The manager turned to players from its youth academy – La Masia – who lacked experience but made up for it with chemistry, having played together since they were kids. The team went on to win the league in 2023, reigniting the Barca emphasis on possession football, and establishing Gavi, Pedri, and Lamine Yamal as key parts of the side.
Basketball is definitely not a sport of equal opportunity. Height is so important, that if you know an American man taller than 7ft (and aged between 20 and 40), there is a one-in-six chance he will currently be playing in the NBA.
Sir Dave Brailsford is synonymous with the concept of marginal gains, having relentlessly pushed the British Cycling team to find 1% improvements;
When the football icon shaved his hear in 1999, journalists said it was an intentional move to mark “his rite of passage from single man to husband and father.” But according to Victoria’s memoir it was her own stylist who suggested it: “David would have been happy with just a bit of a crop.”
In the early 2000s, head coach Clive Woodward made England the first team to wear skin tight kit – believing that baggy shirts make it easier to be tackled. A small – and perhaps vital – factor in the team’s 2003 World Cup win.
Football clubs are morphing into media companies: they now make more from sponsorship and naming rights than matchday tickets.
Until the mid 2000s the Premier League was dominated by two managers – Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson – who collectively won 11 of 12 titles. But their managing styles couldn’t have been more different. Wenger would stay silent for the majority of the half time break, believing that players needed to calm down before they could think and communicate clearly. Meanwhile Ferguson was synonymous with the ‘hairdryer treatment’ – screaming at players, and in one instance kicking a boot at David Beckham’s head.
In 1974, the three-day week in Britain meant that Saturday became a full working day – limiting attendance at football grounds. Evening matches were a no-go, given clubs were banned from using floodlights. So the only solution was to play matches on Sunday. The idea was initially unpopular – Brian Clough said “if Sunday football comes in, I walk out” – but it 50 years later it is now a permanent fixture of English football.
Football clubs use increasingly complicated statistics to assess performance, such as blocks made and touches in the opposition box. But all the data comes from analysts watching games in real time. They note every event that takes place – capturing over 2000 per game – and spend hours re-watching games to ensure quality control.
The hospital consulted with the Ferrari F1 pit crew team to improve its ICU handover process. After all, who better to copy than a team replacing four tires and filling a tank of gas in a matter of seconds? The hospital eventually created its equivalent of a pit crew ‘lollipop man’ – the individual who only waves a driver through after making sure everyone else on the team has put the tires on. After changing its protocol, the hospital’s error rate dropped from 30% to 10%.
Ex-footballers have different views on the age-old England midfielder debate: they pick the one they played with. John Terry says Lampard, Jamie Carragher says Gerrard, and Gary Neville says Scholes.
Don’t underestimate the influence of Lionel Messi. When the football legend joined Inter Miami FC; subscriptions to MLS Season Pass on Apple TV+ more than doubled; retailer Fanatics reported that Messi’s jersey was the top seller all sports; ticket prices skyrocketed by more than 1,700% on resale sites.