Sport after Moneyball: Exploring sports analytics and the digital economy
Highlights The 2011 film Moneyball was a critically acclaimed, Academy Award-nominated, box office success. This is quite something, given that the movie centres on debates over baseball strategy and statistics. Moneyball dramatizes the story of the Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball (MLB) team in the early 2000s, and specifically the team’s adoption of unconventional player…
Move over menstrual cycle: Ovulation monitoring is the new gold standard to monitor REDs in female athletes
Highlights Low energy availability (LEA) arises when there is not enough energy (calories) consumed to support critical body functions as well as extra physical activity, such as training Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) is a result of longstanding LEA and is associated with a variety of negative health and performance outcomes Until recently, menstrual…
Exercising outdoors in Canada: What the research tells us about exercising safely and effectively in extreme cold
Highlights Our bodies experience cold as a physiological stressor, meaning that one’s body must work hard to keep itself in thermal balance It is important for athletes and coaches to be aware of ways to mitigate the risks of cold exposure, which can include tissue injury and diminished cardiovascular capacity This article summarizes the research…
Exercising outdoors in Canada: What the research tells us about exercising safely and effectively in extreme heat
Highlights While Canadians are used to severe winter weather, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record in Canada have occurred in the last 25 years. This has real world implications for outdoor sport events. For example, even the best triathletes in the world struggled with the extreme heat in Edmonton in July, with Paula…
How sport organizations and events are combating climate change
Photo credit: Denise MaxwellOrganizers of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games plant trees for a new Commonwealth Games Forest that will serve as one of the Games’ legacies. Highlights At a United Nations Conference on the role of sport in combating climate change in April 2022, conference participants noted that sport is both a casualty of and…
Current perspectives on multi-sport participation
Highlights What’s the best path to the podium? That’s the question behind the debate between early specialization and early diversification. Drawing on the example of some well-known champions like Tiger Woods or the Williams sisters, the early specialization camp argues that an early start in the athlete’s primary sport is essential for development of high-level…
“I feel (un)safe when…”: What athletes have to say about high performance culture
Highlights In this article, researchers present their findings about Canadian high performance athletes’ perspectives on safe and unsafe sport environments, as well as recommendations for changes Athletes identified coach behaviour, teammate or fellow athlete behaviour, lack of resources and an inattentive sport system as key factors contributing to unsafe sporting environments Implementing initiatives to target…
Enhancing sport and physical activity participation for Canadians with disabilities
Highlights When Jenny Davey first started working at the Canadian Paralympic Committee (CPC) in 2014, she had no idea how much a fledgling research partnership would shape the work she does in the Paralympic sport system 8 years later. “I never would have thought, ‘well, 8 years from now, I’m going to be able to…
Indigenous ways of knowing and doing connected to physical literacy, diversity and collaboration in sport
Highlights “Teaching was something that I always knew that I could do. From an early age, I was captain of teams and things like that, so I was thrust into leadership roles,” says Greg Henhawk. Henhawk is a Mohawk of the Bear Clan, from Six Nations of Grand River First Nation, in Southern Ontario. He’s…
The Canadian sport and physical activity community identifies topics for researchers to prioritize
Highlights Adoption in practice of research findings is often sub-optimal because of a disconnect between researchers and the individuals or groups overseeing and facilitating sport and physical activity participation. To help bridge the gap between sport and physical activity research activities and the needs of those best positioned to apply those findings, we conducted a…