"Circus acts may lack the competition of sports, but [Cirque du Soleil's] shows are no less physically demanding. At times, they can require even more specialized athleticism," writes SportTechie's Joe Lemire.
By the numbers: During a catch-and-throw exercise for Messi10, a new show based on the life of soccer icon Lionel Messi, one performer experienced 15 times the force of gravity (15 G).
As February winds down, only one team in all of men's college basketball remains unbeaten: Division III Swarthmore (25-0), a tiny liberal arts college outside Philadelphia that's known more for its rigorous academics than its sports teams.
By the numbers: Swarthmore accepts just 9% of applicants and had a total enrollment of 1,647 students last year. For reference, Kansas, the No. 1-ranked team in Division I, enrolls ~30,000.
With the Summer Olympics scheduled to open in Tokyo in less than five months, organizers are grappling with the coronavirus outbreak — and facing questions about whether the games could be moved, postponed, or even canceled.
The backdrop: Japan has closed schools nationwide until late March, and the country's professional baseball league is currently playing preseason games in empty stadiums.
Maria Sharapova announced Wednesday her retirement from professional tennis in an essay in Vanity Fair, closing out a career that saw her win Wimbledon in 2004 at the age of 17 and eventually add four more Grand Slam titles.
What she's saying: "Looking back now, I realize that tennis has been my mountain," she wrote. "My path has been filled with valleys and detours, but the views from its peak were incredible. After 28 years and five Grand Slam titles, though, I’m ready to scale another mountain — to compete on a different type of terrain."
British youth soccer players will no longer be allowed to head the ball in practice, according to new safety guidelines for kids ages 11 and under. And even after they leave primary school, headers "will remain a low priority when compared to other technical aspects of the game."
Why it matters: The new guidelines are in direct response to a 2019 study that found former pro soccer players were 3.5 times more likely to die of dementia compared with a control sample, and five times more likely to die of Parkinson's.
George Hood, a 62-year-old Marine veteran from Naperville, Illinois, recently set the Guinness World Record for longest abdominal plank at eight hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds.
What he's saying: Hood discovered planking a decade ago and quickly got hooked. "It was a static exercise. There was no movement involved. I could put music in my ears at the gym and lay on the floor and plank," he told WashPost.
LeBron James, whose play defined the last two decades of NBA basketball, scored a season-high 40 points in his first matchup against Zion Williamson (29 points), whose play could define the next two decades.
Fun fact: LeBron has now faced a fellow No. 1 overall pick 356 times — and he's finished with the scoring advantage in 297 of those games, per ESPN.
Four months ago, on the very same weekend, Eliud Kipchoge became the first human to run a marathon in under two hours, and fellow Kenyan Brigid Kosgei shattered the women's marathon record.
Why it matters: Kipchoge and Kosgei were both wearing Nike's controversial Vaporfly sneakers, which many believed would be banned because of the performance boost provided by a carbon-fiber plate in the midsole that acted as a spring and saved the runner energy.
