Tag: sports

Unified Weapons Master

fighters use a suit for 90-second bouts and then rest while they are cooled by compressed air blasted into a network of silicone tubes contained in the suit. The air passes out through 1000s of tiny holes held against the skin by an undergarment. Scoring is done by 52 sensors, which 10K times a second measure various forces, including blows, accelerations and vibrations, generated by the impact of hands, feet and weapons. The data are wirelessly transmitted to a computer to calculate the fractures, tissue damage and other injuries which are likely to have been sustained had the fighters been unprotected.

Powerlifting World Record

On July 2, 2015, a video was uploaded to YouTube that began with a teenage girl in a gym wrapping a weightlifting belt around her waist. Her hair was nested atop her head in a messy bun, and headphones covered her ears. A straight bar with 6 plates on each side, totalling 190 kg, rested on the ground next to her. She huffed and puffed, paced from one end of the gym to the other, and clapped her hands. Small clouds of chalk wafted from her palms. Then she walked up to the bar, howled, bent down, and lifted the weight to her mid-thigh, in what is called a deadlift. She exhaled, arched her back, and dropped the bar and the plates to the floor. “Yes!” she screamed. “Fucking shit! I did it!”

30 years boxing champion

if you’ve seen the wrestler, you know how impressive this is:

Unlike most other boxers, who train down to their fighting weight only when they have a bout coming up, Hopkins keeps himself right around the 80 kg light-heavyweight limit. Fight people marvel at the ascetic rigor that has kept him perpetually in superb shape for almost 30 years, his habit of returning to the gym first thing Monday morning after a Saturday-night fight, the list of pleasurable things he won’t eat, drink or do.

Sub 2h marathon

The road is so flat and straight, you can see them coming from 1km away. 6 runners flow in arrowhead formation around the Canadian city of Saskatoon. The early November air is still and dry, the sky overcast, and the temperature hovers a bit above freezing, just as predicted. All in their early 20s, they’ve been training together for this moment for years; only in the last month did their coach select which 3 will go for the record. The remaining 3 form the front of the arrowhead, blocking the wind and enduring the mental effort of controlling the pace. Should one of them cross the finish line in 2 hours—or faster—all 6 will share equally in the $50M jackpot promised by the heirs to the Hoka One One fortune. The pot of money is up for grabs, for any runner, anywhere in the world. The chase is on. So, will they make it? And what year is this? We’ve cut the distance to the sub-2 marathon in half since 1998, but it will get progressively harder to trim the remaining seconds. Still, the physiologists tell us that it’s not impossible, meaning it is possible. I’m saying the year is…2075—and they make it.

The 2h barrier fell in October 2019, though as always there’s drama.