Can music make you run faster?

Dr Costas Karageorghis, calls music sport’s “legal drug”, capable of increasing performance by 20 per cent while reducing an athlete’s perception of effort by 10 per cent.

As head of Brunel University’s music in sport research department and the author of more than 100 academic papers on the subject including several published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, Karageorghis is well qualified to make these pronouncements.

UK School Games go from strength to strength

With simulated random drug-testing and records tumbling in a series of outstanding performances, the fourth UK School Games really did mirror their senior counterparts, the Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

Staged in Wales at three venues – Cardiff, Newport and Swansea, the event attracted more than 1,600 competitors, aged between 14 and 17 and from schools throughout the UK.

They took part in 10 sports at this year’s games, an event that continues to grow stronger year by year.

Immediate Orthopaedic care can help heal shoulder injuries in young athletes

Worldwide, approximately 45 million children and adolescents participate in organised athletics every year and that number is on the rise.

Two types of shoulder injuries suffered by young athletes – dislocation and overuse – appear to respond well to specialised orthopaedic care according to a paper published in the February 2009 issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery titled, “Adolescent Shoulder Injuries: Consensus and Controversies.”

Change of roles within UK Sport

John Steele, Chief Executive UK Sport

Chief Executive, John Steele, has announced role changes within UK Sport

Liz Nicholl has been appointed Chief Operating Officer at UK Sport, whilst Peter Keen becomes the Performance Director. The changes have been brought about by a Strategic Review looking to ensure the organisation is fully focused on its performance ambitions and priorities and using existing resources to maximum effect.

Source: UK Sport
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School Olympics proposed

A “Schools Olympics” pitting pupils from around the country against each other could be introduced by a future Conservative government and would replace the existing UK School Games, which feature competitors of school age, but do not actually involve teams or individuals from rival establishments.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, is considering proposals which would see schools compete against each other in a variety of events at local, county and regional levels, before a national championships was held in a major UK city.
At the culmination of the Games, one school would be crowned with the accolade of the sportiest in the country.

100 metre sprint world record could go as low as 9.48 seconds – but probably no lower

2008 was a great year for sports fans, with highlights including Usain Bolt shattering both the 100m and 200m world records at the Beijing Olympics and knocking tenths of a second off each in the process. The fact is that athletes have been getting faster and faster since times have been accurately recorded, but is there an upper limit to how fast athletes can run?

American marathon runner Mark Denny, from Stanford University thought that there were and set about trying to predict what those limits were. To do so he scrutinised the running performances of humans and two other famous racing species, greyhounds and thoroughbred horses, to find how close their modern participants are to the peak performances for their species.

He has just published his predictions for their top speeds in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

Drugs re-tests for Beijing blood samples

The International Olympic Committee will re-test around 500 doping samples from the Beijing Games to check for traces of a new blood-booster drug.

In October it was revealed that nearly 5,000 samples would be analysed. But the IOC says it will now “primarily target endurance events in cycling, rowing, swimming and athletics”.