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Like a red rag to a Tiger: can shirt colours really affect results in sport? | Sean Ingle

Seesawing studies find that red is for winners or black results in more penalties – while others find effects murky at bestHere’s one to ponder while gazing at another dull and drabby December sky. Can colour affect sporting performance? Tiger Woods certainly thinks so. “I wear red on Sundays because my mom thinks that’s my power colour,” he said, while blasting his way to 15 majors. So does Sir Alex Ferguson, who famously changed Manchester United’s grey kits at half-time during a 1996 defeat to Southampton because, he claimed, his players had struggled to pick each other out. Meanwhile, for more than 15 years a battle has raged in sober journals over whether a red uniform can provide a winning...

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The Spin | The Essex village cricket club going in to bat against climate crisis

Eight Ash Green have been concerned about their carbon footprint for years. This summer they hope to spread the wordWith 2020 the joint hottest year on record, extreme weather events stoking up and a plethora of bad new stories in he past few weeks – the Greenland ice sheet on the edge of a major tipping point, threats to global food production and a drastic drop in Arctic wildlife population – the climatic situation is grim. It’s a wet dog and humanity is following-on, against Darren Stevens.Last week, the BBC ran a project called Sport 2050. The idea was to raise awareness of how the climate crisis is projected to change sport in the next three decades. Its brief was...

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Cracking the vault: Artificial intelligence judging comes to gymnastics

Japanese IT giant Fujitsu is developing a 3D sensory system that will make scoring easier. But will computers ever fully replace human judges?A light blinks on the black box alerting the gymnast to begin her routine. She launches off the vault, lands and turns to salute the robotic judge. Her score is already flashing on the big screen to the Olympics crowd and to millions of viewers at home, who have followed the live scoring as the move is dissected in real time.This is not a scene from Blade Runner 2049, but a possible vision of gymnastics future as it races to include artificial intelligence in its judging system. Related: USA's Morgan Hurd wins surprise gold in all-around final at...

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