Word: speeding
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...should. According to a new study just published in the journal Science, the greatest single increase in racehorse speed in the history of the sport occurred about a century ago and owed entirely to where the jockey did - or didn't - place his fanny on the saddle. (See the top 10 animal stories...
Until the end of the 19th century, all jockeys assumed a pose on the horse much like that of dressage riders: back straight, head up, seat planted firmly in place. The posture provided plenty of speed and plenty of control and, significantly, did not require the riders to support their own body weight - a real consideration over the course of a long race...
...work on their own, standing up in the stirrups, bending forward and surfing the motion of the horse as it galloped. What happened was, they went faster - 5% to 7% faster between 1890 and 1900, as more and more riders adopted the idea. That's a huge bump in speed in a sport that invented the term "win by a nose." In 1897, riders in the U.K. began picking up the practice, and by 1910, they were moving faster too. (See pictures of the Royal Ascot...
...saddle. "The sensors are accelerometers similar to what's in the Wii," says physicist Andrew Spence, who participated in the work. "Once you synchronize the two, you can determine the relative motion of the man and the horse." The jockeys also wore global-positioning trackers so their speed and position could be followed. "The tracker was in the helmet, where the GPS satellites could get a clear view of it," says Spence. The horses and riders were then sent running, and the biomechanical data poured...
Jackson was the most famous entertainer on earth; his sudden death was real news, huge news. His memorial 12 days later was a mammoth, global event. It was during the in-between, as it always is, that the coverage went into high-speed idling mode. For a good week, there was little news - about his estate, the toxicology tests, his final moments - so the talk became about how little news there was. There were the prime-time specials, the morning-show reports, the commentators and endless clichés. (He was a barrier breaker, a chameleon, a Peter...