Articles
True stories from athletes, and what we actually know about them. These are the articles the app serves its athletes, here in full, with no account to create.
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Eyes closed at the start gate: Shiffrin's rehearsal takes 52 seconds
At the top of a slalom, eyes closed, hands trace something in the air. It looks like a run, and a rehearsal only counts if it lasts as long as the real thing.
4 min read -
Two shots, twenty heartbeats apart: what a biathlete knows about your pressure
A biathlete shoots twice in the same race, minutes apart. Her heart doesn't need to be in the same place for both, twenty beats separate them.
4 min read -
Nadal's two bottles were never a lucky charm
In the last match of his career, in November 2024, Nadal's two bottles were still sitting in front of his chair, exactly the way they always had been. He put it in writing himself: it was never a lucky charm.
3 min read -
Fuji 1976: Lauda gives up his world title after two laps in the rain
Fuji, October 24, 1976: Niki Lauda is three points clear in the world championship. He runs two laps in the rain, pulls into the pits, and his engineer offers him a blown engine nobody would have questioned.
3 min read -
Sensors on skydivers: your fear doesn't go away, it shows up earlier
An American airfield, sometime in the 1960s. Skydivers are wired up with sensors, from the ground to the open door of the plane. For the first-timers, the curve climbs all the way to the jump. For the veterans, it has already come back down.
4 min read -
The sweatshirt in the stands that fixed Wilkinson's kicking
One day at training, Jonny Wilkinson couldn't find his kicking consistency. The man who worked with him on his kicking climbed into the stand behind the posts, spread a sweatshirt across a seat, and gave the seat a name.
4 min read -
The notebook left in a Wimbledon courtesy car that changed a coach
In 2010, a coach picked up a notebook someone had left in a car at Wimbledon, opened it, and started paying much closer attention to a player he had already been following for years.
2 min read -
The night Popovich put his four starters on a plane home
On November 29, 2012, four San Antonio players are on a plane home while their team plays in Miami on national TV. The call had been made the night before. Two nights later came Memphis.
4 min read -
Van de Velde, three shots clear: the first mistake is never the one that costs you
Three shots clear with two to give, and a seven on the card: the shot that cost Jean van de Velde the Open wasn't his first bad one.
5 min read -
Four quiet words, 90 million watching, published 35 years later
Thirty thousand in the stands, ninety million more watching at home, and four words that wouldn't see print for another thirty-five years.
5 min read