With the opening ceremony today, I felt it was necessary to have a themed post, and when I found this video about how Olympian body types have changed over the years, I thought that would be a good place to start:
The CBC has a whole playlist of Olympic-themed science videos, including stats on your chances of making it to the Games and what factors impact performance. They make a good point that I've observed watching sports in general. Football players look like they could crush me by sitting on me, baseball players look like they could throw me, and gymnasts/figure skaters look like I could throw them. There's also the question of age: I understand the body works at an optimal level for only so long and therefore prevents older people from competing in certain sports, but it's getting to the point where you'll have middle schoolers competing in the Olympics and retired before they go to college. At least they'll be able to pay for school, I guess.
Popular Science also has a good amount of Sochi coverage from the cover story of their February issue, "Engineering the Ideal Olympian." It includes segments about wind tunnels used for training ski jumpers (which was of significance for this year because this is the first time women are allowed to compete in the ski jumping event), using race car design knowledge to create a faster bobsled (if only it were for the Jamaican team), and a good chart detailing the common injuries that occur in the Winter Olympics.
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