Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures
The Olympics are the world’s largest sporting events, attracting billions of viewers worldwide. Important parts are racing sports, such as running, swimming and speed skating. In these sports, athletes compete against each other in different heats to determine who wins the gold, or who is granted a...
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| Format: | Online |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2015
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4623299/ |
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pubmed-46232992015-11-17 Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures Dalmaijer, Edwin S. Nijenhuis, Beorn G. Van der Stigchel, Stefan Psychology The Olympics are the world’s largest sporting events, attracting billions of viewers worldwide. Important parts are racing sports, such as running, swimming and speed skating. In these sports, athletes compete against each other in different heats to determine who wins the gold, or who is granted a place in the final. Of course, the gold goes to whoever is the most talented and has trained the hardest. Or does it? Here we argue that subtle differences between athletes’ starts can bias the competition, and demonstrate this in the results of speed skating at the 2010 Winter Olympics. This bias could be removed by simple alterations to current starting procedures. The proposed change would greatly improve racing sport fairness, which currently suffers from an injustice that disadvantages not only athletes, but entire nations rooting for them. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-10-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4623299/ /pubmed/26579009 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01618 Text en Copyright © 2015 Dalmaijer, Nijenhuis and Van der Stigchel. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Dalmaijer, Edwin S. Nijenhuis, Beorn G. Van der Stigchel, Stefan |
| spellingShingle |
Dalmaijer, Edwin S. Nijenhuis, Beorn G. Van der Stigchel, Stefan Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures |
| author_facet |
Dalmaijer, Edwin S. Nijenhuis, Beorn G. Van der Stigchel, Stefan |
| author_sort |
Dalmaijer, Edwin S. |
| title |
Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures |
| title_short |
Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures |
| title_full |
Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures |
| title_fullStr |
Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures |
| title_sort |
life is unfair, and so are racing sports: some athletes can randomly benefit from alerting effects due to inconsistent starting procedures |
| description |
The Olympics are the world’s largest sporting events, attracting billions of viewers worldwide. Important parts are racing sports, such as running, swimming and speed skating. In these sports, athletes compete against each other in different heats to determine who wins the gold, or who is granted a place in the final. Of course, the gold goes to whoever is the most talented and has trained the hardest. Or does it? Here we argue that subtle differences between athletes’ starts can bias the competition, and demonstrate this in the results of speed skating at the 2010 Winter Olympics. This bias could be removed by simple alterations to current starting procedures. The proposed change would greatly improve racing sport fairness, which currently suffers from an injustice that disadvantages not only athletes, but entire nations rooting for them. |
| publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
| publishDate |
2015 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4623299/ |
| _version_ |
1613493921065730048 |