sandra savaglio
 
World records
predicting World records Some years ago I was training for an amateur swimming competition called Atomiade. For fun, I was comparing the times of the team with the world records. This is how I found that not only our performances were depressing (in particular mine), but also that the speed reached during professional competitions, for different races, as a function of the race time can be described by scaling laws, very well defined and very similar for men and women, for runners and swimmers. http://www.asceri.org/atomiade12-Info.htmlshapeimage_3_link_0
The Nature article Together with my colleague Vincenzo Carbone (Physics Dep., University of Calabria) I published a brief article in the international journal Nature which was very appreciated by the press and the public. This effect was never clearly detected before and never described with very simple mathematical tools. Here a presentation (August 2006) with further developments explained in simple terms.http://www.fis.unical.it/http://www.unical.it/portale/international/Sports Science_files/scaling_law.pdfshapeimage_4_link_0shapeimage_4_link_1shapeimage_4_link_2
The interest of the press • The Daily Telegraph, by Roger Highfield • PhysicsWeb • WebMDHealth, by David Kinney, Associated Press • HealthSCOUT, by Nicolle Charbonneau • Yahoo News • Reuters Health • Canada's International Network • abc NEWS • La Repubblica (in Italian) • Zientzia (in Basque, with Italian translation)http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/telegraph.txthttp://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/PhyWeb.htmlhttp://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/WebMD.htmlhttp://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/HealthScout.htmlhttp://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/yahoo.htmlhttp://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/Reuters.htmlhttp://www.slam.ca/CNEWSScience0003/16_women.htmlhttp://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/gender_differences000316.htmlhttp://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/gal.htmlhttp://www.zientzia.net/artikulua.asp?Artik_kod=382http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~savaglio/sport/zientzia.txtshapeimage_5_link_0shapeimage_5_link_1shapeimage_5_link_2shapeimage_5_link_3shapeimage_5_link_4shapeimage_5_link_5shapeimage_5_link_6shapeimage_5_link_7shapeimage_5_link_8shapeimage_5_link_9shapeimage_5_link_10
Related articles If you’re interested, Vincenzo and I wrote another couple of articles on this: Scaling and forecasting in athletic world records, Carbone V. & Savaglio S., 2001, Journal of Sports Science, 19, 477 Scaling laws and possible predictions of the athletic world records, Carbone V. & Savaglio S., 2000, SdS – Rivista della Scuola dello Sport – CONI, Vol. 47–48, 91 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/rjsp/2001/00000019/00000007/art00003shapeimage_6_link_0