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Nominees announced for Covid Inspiration Award

Press Release:

Tenacity and determination are some of the traits that propel athletes to greatness. In a year beset by unprecedented challenges, roadblocks and disruptions brought on by the global Covid-19 pandemic, they were also key attributes that drove many event organisers across athletics to meet those challenges and provide competitive opportunities for athletes and entertaining events for fans around the world.

To celebrate those efforts, World Athletics is delighted to announce the nominees for the Covid Inspiration Award, a special honour this year to recognise an individual or group of individuals whose efforts have resulted in the delivery of a particularly inspiring athletics event or experience in 2020.

“Necessity has been the mother of invention for all of us in this pandemic year and we have seen some really creative initiatives and programmes from our athletes and our event organisers, who have had to reinvent their operations and surmount huge obstacles in order to provide competition for our athletes and fans, which is the lifeblood of our sport,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said. “We wanted to recognise their enormous resilience and creativity this year by presenting this special award to one of those events that have been exceptionally innovative this year.”

The three nominees, as selected by World Athletics Council Members, are (listed alphabetically):

Herculis EBS Monaco Wanda Diamond League meeting

After a slew of cancellations and postponements that delayed the start of the international season, meeting organisers overcame unprecedented public health and safety concerns, global travel restrictions and painful budget cuts to stage their annual event and finally kick off the interrupted Diamond League season on 14 August, an evening capped by Joshua Cheptegei’s stunning world 5000m record before a crowd of 5000 fans.

In all, 132 athletes – 13 of those reigning world champions – from 36 countries in six federation areas competed across 14 disciplines. Underscoring the quality of the event, 14 world-leading performances were set at the meeting. Of those, 11 remained the year’s best performances at the end of the season.

Ultimate Garden Clash, an original idea by Renaud Lavillenie

A series of three innovative competitions, devised by Renaud Lavillenie and his fellow pole vaulters who presented their idea to World Athletics. The events were held over a five-week period in which athletes faced off via a live video link while competing in their respective training bases.

Organised jointly by the athletes and World Athletics, and broadcast live on its social media platforms, the Ultimate Garden Clash featured separate men’s and women’s pole vault competitions and a triathlon event with three of the world’s best decathletes. The men’s pole vault edition on 3 May between world champion Sam Kendricks, world record-holder Mondo Duplantis and former world record-holder Lavillenie was the world’s first high-level ‘live’ athletics competition since global lockdowns went into effect in March, and attracted more than one million viewers from more than 90 countries in the first 24 hours.

Gdynia 2020 for the World Athletics Half Marathon Championships

The local organising committee in the northern Polish city faced a series of pandemic related challenges throughout the year but never gave up on their dream of hosting a World Championship event, which they did on 17 October in what became the first and only World Athletics Championship held in 2020.

After a postponement from the original March date, the organisers continually adapted to the changing situation, working with World Athletics to design a thorough first-of-its-kind health and safety protocol for the event that ultimately attracted 225 athletes from 54 teams, the second-highest at these championships since the 1998 edition. Peres Jepchirchir of Kenya broke the world record for a women-only race while four championship records, two area records and 21 national records were also set.

The voting process

The winner will be decided by a public vote via the World Athletics Facebook, Twitter and Instagram social media platforms. The combined number of votes from all three platforms will determine the winner. Voting opens on 9 November and closes at midnight on 15 November.

The winner will be announced at the World Athletics Awards 2020 to be held virtually on Saturday 5 December.

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Which city is the sports capital of the world?

Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, is frequently chosen and acknowledged as the sporting capital of the world. Melbourne is second biggest city in Australia but were chosen the sporting capital of the decade in 2016. The people of Melbourne are actually sports crazy and it doesn’t matter just what the sport is, the crowds in the city turn out for it.

So why is Melbourne the sports capital and how did it get to be the sports capital? First of all, the city has a rich sporting history and culture. The city was established in 1835 and sport was a feature of city lifestyle right from then, with the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) being formed in 1838. The now prominent Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) opened in 1853. It’s still there and is now the premier sports arena in the country. Different kinds of football grew to become also popular in Melbourne’s formative years, in due course bringing about its own sport – Australian Rules Football, or ‘footy’ as it’s called by the local people. The very first Melbourne Cup horse race took place in 1861 and is still going. The initial Australian tennis championships took place in 1905 and is still held there. Melbourne put on the 1956 Olympics.

Community sports activity is really a considerable part of the the cities life style and involvement rates in the city are probably the highest globally. This is easily witnessed each and every weekend you will see just how prominent local community sporting activities is with people actively taking part and enjoying a variety of sporting activities for example cricket, tennis, footy, rugby, netball, basketball, baseball, golf as well as soccer. They play an important part of so many people’s community lives and health and fitness. When people in Melbourne aren’t playing sport, they are fans of viewing sport. The Australian Football League grand final draws 100 000 fans to the MCG. Rugby Union is not a well-known or a common sport in the city, but Melbourne stills hold the world record for the highest number of fans to go to see a game live!

Along with the 1956 Olympic Games, Melbourne continues to host world class sports entertainment. Every year, there is the F1 Australian Grand Prix, the Australian Open Tennis Grand Slam, the Spring Horse racing Carnival, the MotoGP, the Boxing Day cricket international game along with the Rip Curl Pro surfing competition. There are the major AFL, National Rugby League, or Australian A-League (soccer) matches on most weekends. There have recently been other major one-off events like the Commonwealth Games, the Cricket World Cup, World swimming championships and also Asian Cup soccer.

All of this is backed up by lots of first class sports stadiums including the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, Melbourne Park, Rod Laver Arena, AAMI Park, Hisense Arena, Etihad Stadium, Flemington Racecourse, State Netball and Hockey Centre, Margaret Court Arena and the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit and that is an infrastructure which is not close to being surpassed by any other location in the world. It is easy to see how and the reason why Melbourne is considered the sporting capital of the world and exactly why sports activity is such a part of the way of life around Australia.

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Compression Garments Reduce Strength Loss After Training

Media Release:

Regular training enhances your strength, but recovery is equally important. Elastic bandages and compression garments are widely used in sports to facilitate recovery and prevent injuries. Now, a research team from Tohoku University has determined that compression garments also reduce strength loss after strenuous exercise.

Their research findings were published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.

The team – led by assistant professor János Négyesi and professor Ryoichi Nagatomi from the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering – used a computerized dynamometer to train healthy subjects until they became fatigued. The same equipment was used to detect changes in the maximal strength and knee joint position sense straight after, 24 hours after and one week after the training.

The computerized dynamometer (Cybex, division of Lumex, Inc., Ron- konkoma, New York, USA) used for both data acquisition and training. ©János Négyesi

Their results revealed that using a below-knee compression garment during training compensates for fatigue effects on maximal strength immediately following the exercise and once 24 hours has elapsed. In other words, one can begin the next maximal intensity strength training earlier if one has used a below-knee compression garment in the previous workout.

Although compression garments reduce strength loss, their findings reaffirmed that they afford no protection against knee joint position sense errors.

“Our previous studies focused only on the effects of compression garments on joint position sense,” said Dr. Négyesi. “The present study found such garments to have the potential to reduce strength loss after a fatiguing exercise, which may help us better understand how applying a compression garment during exercise can decrease the risk of musculoskeletal injuries during sports activities.”

The researchers believe wearing a below-knee compression garment during regular workouts is beneficial because of the mechanical support and tissue compression it provides.

Looking ahead, the team aims to detect whether maximal intensity programs that last for weeks produce different outcomes than the current findings to determine the longitudinal effects of compression garments.

Publication Details:
Title: A below‐knee compression garment reduces fatigue‐induced strength loss but not knee joint position sense errors
Authors: János Négyesi, Li Yin Zhang, Rui Nian Jin, Tibor Hortobágyi, Ryoichi Nagatomi
Journal: European Journal of Applied Physiology
DOI: 10.1007/s00421-020-04507-1

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A new playbook: COVID-19, athletes’ hearts and return to play

Media Release:

BOSTON – Reports have indicated that COVID-19 may cause heart damage in hospitalized patients with severe cases of the disease, but it’s unclear whether cardiac injury also occurs in infected patients who are asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms. This question is of particular concern for athletes because myocarditis–inflammation in the heart usually caused by a viral infection–can cause sudden cardiac death during exercise. In a special report published in JAMA Cardiology, a group led by sports cardiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Emory University School of Medicine offers guidance for athletes’ return to play after they have recovered from COVID-19.

The article addresses the most common questions posed by the media, in clinics and athletic training rooms, and during discussions among cardiologists who care for athletes. With a consideration of evolving data, it represents a reassessment of a previous consensus statement by the American College of Cardiology that was published in May.

“This new set of recommendations is based on my and my fellow authors’ clinical experience treating athletes with COVID-19 over the past few months. Our primary objective was to outline an approach that reduced unnecessary testing while simultaneously ensuring we use resources responsibly to detect athletes at increased risk of adverse cardiac events attributable to the virus during their return to sports,” said senior author Aaron Baggish, MD, director of the Cardiovascular Performance Program at MGH.

Baggish and his colleagues have observed that athletes infected with COVID-19 who experienced no or mild symptoms did not exhibit signs of heart injury. For such athletes, they do not recommend detailed cardiac screening. The prevalence of cardiac injury in athletes who were infected with COVID-19 is still unknown, however, and the team believes it’s prudent to screen for heart damage in athletes with moderate to severe symptoms. The experts also note that despite recent small studies showing that cardiac magnetic resonance imaging has detected potential cardiac abnormalities in individuals who have recovered from COVID-19, they feel that current evidence doesn’t justify its use as a universal screening tool for athletes’ return to play.

“We hope the recommendations put forth in the document will assist practitioners in sports medicine, sports cardiology and general cardiology in the evaluation of athletes for return to play after COVID-19 infection,” said lead author Jonathan Kim, MD, MSc, chief of Cardiology Sports at Emory University School of Medicine. “These recommendations are intended to guide the process of determining who requires more detailed cardiac screening and ensure that all athletes post-COVID-19 infection should have a slow and gradual return to training with close monitoring of persistent symptoms, regardless of the severity of infection.”

The paper’s other authors were Benjamin D. Levine, MD, of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Dermot Phelan, MD, PhD, of the Sanger Heart and Vascular Institute, Atrium Health, Charlotte, North Carolina; Michael S. Emery, MD, MS, of the Sports Cardiology Center, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Cleveland Clinic; Mathew W. Martinez, MD, of Morristown Medical Center, Atlantic Health System, Morristown, New Jersey; Eugene H. Chung, MD, MSc, of Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Paul D. Thompson, MD of Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.

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Menstrual dysfunction is more common among young athletes than among non-athletes

Young athletes experience more menstrual dysfunction than non-athletes do, according to a new Finnish study.

Press Release:

Menstrual dysfunction is more prevalent in young Finnish athletes than it is among non-athletes of a similar age, but athletes experience less body weight dissatisfaction than non-athletes do. These findings are from a recent study at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The study was conducted among members of sports clubs who exercised at least four times a week (athletes) and non-members (non-athletes).

The current study used data from the Finnish Health Promoting Sports Club (FHPSC) study, in which a cohort of athletes and non-athletes in adolescence (14-16 years) and subsequently in young adulthood (18-20 years) were investigated.

The findings of the study showed that in adolescence, 18% of both athletes and non-athletes reported menstrual dysfunction. However, 8% of the athletes reported primary amenorrhea (absence of menses by the age of 15) in contrast to the non-athletes group, where the prevalence of primary amenorrhea was 0%. In young adulthood, the prevalence of menstrual dysfunction in athletes was 39%, while 6% of the non-athletes reported menstrual dysfunction. In this study, menstrual dysfunction was defined as follows: primary amenorrhea, prolonged menstrual cycle (>35 days) or absence of menses for at least three consecutive months (secondary amenorrhea).

“We did not investigate the reasons for menstrual dysfunction, but we know from previous studies that one of the most common reasons for menstrual dysfunction is low energy availability (i.e., inadequate energy intake relative to exercise energy expenditure),” explains Suvi Ravi, the corresponding author and a PhD student at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences.

“The human body is wise, and in this kind of situation it allocates energy to the functions essential for survival and reduces energy allocation for the systems that are not so essential for life, such as reproductive function.”

The present study also assessed body weight dissatisfaction among the participants. The results showed that athletes were more satisfied with their weight and had less desire to lose weight than non-athletes did. Despite this, in both age groups about 20% of the athletes and about 40% of the non-athletes reported body weight dissatisfaction.

“This is concerning since we know that body weight dissatisfaction can result in disordered eating,” Ravi says.

“Attention should be paid to young people’s body weight dissatisfaction as well as menstrual dysfunction in order to prevent future health problems, such as disordered eating and impaired bone mineral density, which can result from low energy availability and menstrual dysfunction.”