Tours Announced for 2012 Sport and Society Conference

Published on May 15, 2012 in Conference, Headline, News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Kings Cross Chapel

Discover Cambridge in two tours, planned especially for delegates of the Sport and Society Conference!

University of Cambridge Tour
11:00am, Sunday, 22 July (Before the first day of the conference)

A trained guide will explain the origins of the city and University, the difference between the University and colleges and relate some of the fascinating stories regarding the famous people connected with Cambridge whilst looking at some of the most important and impressive sites Cambridge has to offer.

and

Sporting Heritage Tour
3:00pm (15:00), Sunday, 22 July (Before the first day of the conference)

This private tour, specifically for the Sport Conference, will lead delegates through the campus to various sites, including Trinity College, home of the Great Court Run, as depicted in the award-winning film, Chariots of Fire.

Both tours, complete with trained tour guides and access to Kings College and Trinity College (for the General Tour and Sporting Tour, respectively) are only $20.

Read more about our tours here.

Limited space is available. To sign up, visit CGPublisher.com, or email us at support@sportandsociety.com

How Social Media Is Changing Sports [INFOGRAPHIC]

Published on May 10, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Sam Laird | Mashable.com | Original Article

Athletes with the most Twitter Followers

Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms are having a tremendous impact on the sports world for fans, players, teams and sponsors alike. We try to stay on top of that here at Mashable, bringing you stories on greatsports memes, moments of unexpected discovery, sophisticated marketing strategies and more.

But sometimes a stellar infographic is needed to put things in perspective. This one, from the sports medicine company KT Tape, shows the different ways social media has changed sports during the past few years.

More than 80% of sports fans monitor social media sites while watching games on TV, and more than 60% do so while watching live events. Players have capitalized on social media and fueled massive buzz as well. More than 9,000 people per second tweeted about Tim Tebow after he threw an unexpected touchdown pass in last season’s NFL Playoffs. Jeremy Lin gained more than 550,000 followers in a single month while taking the NBA by storm earlier this year. And soccer stars Kaka and Ronaldo have leveraged their sport’s global reach to become Twitter’s two most-followed athletes.

KT Tape pulled research from The Wall Street Journal, ESPN.com, CBSSports.com and other sources to compile these facts and much more. Check out the infographic below for the full picture, then tell us in the comments — how is social media changing your sports experience? More…

Image via Mashable.com

Decision Making in Cricket: In the Blink of an Eye

Published on May 4, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

B. R. | The Economist | Original Article

It is described by those who witnessed it as the greatest over ever bowled: Michael Holding, taking the new ball for the West Indies in the 1981 Test against England at the Kensington Oval in Barbados. They called him “whispering death”. His run-up, which started close to the sight-screen, was so graceful, the feet so light upon the turf, that it was said that the umpires couldn’t hear him approach. The action was beautifully languid, so that he appeared to put in no effort into the delivery. And yet the ball would whistle past the batsman’s nose at unplayable speed. At a time when the West Indies had a quartet of fast bowlers considered to be the most fearsome the world had ever seen, Mr Holding was perhaps the slipperiest.

That day he was at his terrifying peak. Geoffrey Boycott, the unfortunate batsman at the other end, said it was the fastest over he had ever faced. And he was no yellow youth. He was one of England’s greatest-ever batsman, with a wonderful eye and an unflappable temperament. Yet for those six balls he played as if he were a blind man swatting at swifts. They say of a sniper’s bullet that it if you hear it, then you are safe, because it will already have passed safely by. It is the ones that you don’t hear that do for you. In that over, five balls screeched past Mr Boycott’s flailing bat. The sixth made a horrible mess of his stumps.

For the mortals in the stands, it is perhaps the greatest mystery in the game: how can top batsmen play fast bowling? That day Mr Holding was clearly too good for Mr Boycott. But in the next Test, at the Antigua Recreation Ground, he scored a century against the same bowling attack. More…

Image by Simon Howden

‘Olympic Genome Project’ Shows What You Share With Medal Hopefuls

Published on April 25, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Sam Laird | Mashable.com | Original Article

What do you have in common with Olympic athletes? Maybe you and a future star went to the same college, or maybe a world-class competitor in a little-known sport hails from your hometown.

Exposing the connections between everyday fans and Olympians or Olympic hopefuls is the idea behind a Facebook app called the U.S. Olympic Genome Project from summer games sponsor Samsung. If you hit “like” on the app’s landing page, it uses information from your Facebook profile to cross reference facts about you against a database of some 3,000 athletes. Then it shows you who you share the most in common with and why.

Ralph Santana, Samsung‘s chief marketing officer in North America, tells Mashable the idea behind the app is to in part bring more attention to athletes who often get overshadowed by media hype. More…

The High-Tech Minimalist Sock-Shoe

Published on April 20, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Sarah C. Rich | Smithsonian.com | Original Article

Every afternoon, a young man runs barefoot down the middle of our street. He’s one of those paleo-fitness people—the ones who believe we should go shoeless like the cavemen when we exercise. I’m not necessarily a detractor—as a runner myself, I think about things like long-term impact on my joints, heel strike and arch support, all of which are purported to be better when barefoot—but given that our environs are now covered in asphalt, broken glass, and worse, I’m also not eager to take up this practice.

Thebarefoot approach is just one among a variety within a movement known as minimalist running. Going shoeless is both the most extreme and the most low-tech of the options for “reducing your shoes.” For those who prefer an intermediary between their skin and the street, there is barefoot-inspired footwear, like the ever more prevalent Vibram 5 Fingers (I’ll reserve my opinion on the aesthetic consequences of this trend). Recently, Nike announced a new shoe for the lightweight category that responds to many of the desires of minimalist runners, and then‚ since Nike likes to push the innovation envelope, goes further, tackling some of the bigger challenges inherent to mass-manufacturing shoes.

The Nike Flyknit takes its cues not so much from bare feet as from socks. The company had heard from runners that the ideal fit for a shoe would be the snug feeling of knit material. “But all the features that make a sock desirable,” Nike says, “have proven to make them a bad choice for a running upper [the part of the shoe that is not the sole or the tongue]. An inherently dynamic material like yarn generally has no structure or durability.”

Image via smithsonianmag.com

The End of an Era in Indiana

Published on April 10, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Craig Fehrman | New York Times | Original Article

ANDERSON, Ind. — At its peak, the Wigwam attracted 5,000 season-ticket holders to Anderson High School boys’ basketball games. The teams and the crowds measured up to the gym’s 8,996-seat capacity. That made the Wigwam the second-biggest high school gym in America, but Anderson athletic directors still found themselves testifying in divorce hearings over the custody of season tickets.

Gradually, though, the enthusiasm diminished. Last season, about 450 season tickets were sold. Given the struggling economy of this city, which has lost many of its manufacturing jobs and residents, the Wigwam’s expense could not be justified, and it closed last summer.

“We’re getting better and better players,” said John Harrell, who worked for 40 years on the sports desk of The Herald-Times in Bloomington and now runs Web sites about boys’and girls’ basketball in Indiana. “But the interest has really leveled off. And it’s not going to go back up.” More…

Image: Chris Bergin for The New York Times

Accommodations Available for Sport and Society Conference

Published on April 3, 2012 in Conference, Headline, News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Accommodations for the Sport and Society Conference will be available through Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University.

Be sure to take advantage of these rooms, just a short train ride away from London, right at the start of the 2012 Olympic Games!

From Murray Edwards:

We offer free parking on site, so you can leave your car and take a pleasant 10-minute stroll into the historic City centre, with its shops, restaurants and bars. Murray Edwards has an extensive, modern Art Collection on display throughout the College, showing a wide range of works donated by female artists. Pieces include sculptures placed around the gardens and many pieces on view in meeting rooms and along the public walkways. Visitors are welcome to stroll around our informal gardens, or take time out to sit in peaceful areas and enjoy the sunshine.

Limited quantities of Single En-Suite Rooms will be available for £73.94 +VAT per evening, including breakfast.

Rooms are available for check-in starting on 21 July 2012 through check-out on 26 July 2012. Rooms and Rates subject to availability.

Booking Code: SSC2012

Rooms are secured via Credit Card. To book, please visit the Murray Edwards website, here .

Image via Andrew Dunn

How David Beats Goliath

Published on March 28, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Malcolm Gladwell | New Yorker | Original Article

Originally published May 11, 2009

When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team, he settled on two principles. The first was that he would never raise his voice. This was National Junior Basketball—the Little League of basketball. The team was made up mostly of twelve-year-olds, and twelve-year-olds, he knew from experience, did not respond well to shouting. He would conduct business on the basketball court, he decided, the same way he conducted business at his software firm. He would speak calmly and softly, and convince the girls of the wisdom of his approach with appeals to reason and common sense.

The second principle was more important. Ranadivé was puzzled by the way Americans played basketball. He is from Mumbai. He grew up with cricket and soccer. He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless. Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would inbound the ball and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. A basketball court was ninety-four feet long. But most of the time a team defended only about twenty-four feet of that, conceding the other seventy feet. Occasionally, teams would play a full-court press—that is, they would contest their opponent’s attempt to advance the ball up the court. But they would do it for only a few minutes at a time. It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, and Ranadivé thought that that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams. Good teams, after all, had players who were tall and could dribble and shoot well; they could crisply execute their carefully prepared plays in their opponent’s end. Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that made them so good? More…

Illustration: Zohar Lazar

A History of the Summer Paralympic Games

Published on March 11, 2012 in Book and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From Stoke Mandeville to Stratford: A History of the Summer Paralympic Games by Ian Brittain is now available as part of the  Sport and Society series.

This book is an attempt to document the history of the summer Paralympic Games and present it in one accessible and easy-to-read volume. From the outset, it should be made very clear that this book is not meant to be an academic text. It has always been the author’s intention that it should be a resource for anyone with an interest in the Paralympic Games, their history, or Great Britain’s participation in the Games. Through twelve years of research, the author has brought together all of the facts, figures, and interesting stories that have occurred in the development of the summer Games—from their roots at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in the United Kingdom to the global mega-event they have become today. This is the first publication to include images of posters, winner’s medals, and other artefacts connected with the Games—some of which have never been seen in print. Every endeavour has been made to include all relevant information, and this text serves as an ideal starting point from which future researchers and historians may begin. As we have noticed recently with the increased documentation of Olympic history, it is the author’s hope that this text will inspire others to contribute to a more complete history of the Paralympic Games. A more complete history may lead to a better understanding of the importance of the Paralympic Games and their impact upon the lives of people with disabilities.

Dr Ian Brittain is Project Manager for ‘Peace, Olympics, Paralympics’ within the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University. He is a former Executive Board member of the International Stoke Mandeville Wheelchair Sports Federation and has attended the last three Paralympic Games in Sydney, Athens, and Beijing. Besides carrying out research in sport as a tool for peace and development, a large part of his research focuses on sociological, historical, and sports management aspects of Paralympic and disability sport.

If God Existed, He’d Be A Solid Midfielder

Published on February 14, 2012 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

Aleksandar Hemon, Granta

First, a Little Bit about Me, though I am Not Important Here

I came to this fine country from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the winter of 1992, a couple of months before the war started. I did not plan to stay in the USA unless someone offered me a job, which crossed no American mind. I came to Chicago to visit my friend George and was supposed to fly back on May 1, the day the siege of Sarajevo commenced. Thus I got stuck here, no job or money, my only asset George and a couple of his friends. My life changed overnight and I became profoundly miserable: I watched CNN extensively and voyeuristically as it covered the slow killing of my hometown, and felt thoroughly disconnected from the world around me.

By Bosnian standards, I had been an athletic person. Even though I smoked two packs a day for years and enjoyed many an alcoholic potion, I had played soccer once or twice a week since time immemorial. But upon arriving in this country, I gained weight due to a diet based on Burger King and Twinkies and exacerbated by a series of tortuous attempts to quit smoking. Furthermore, I couldn’t find anybody to play soccer with. Not playing soccer tormented me. It wasn’t about being healthy – I was young enough not to care about my health – it was about feeling fully alive. Without soccer I was at sea, mentally and physically. More…

Photo by Velibor Bozovic via Granta.com