Briton Tony Davies has pretty much seen it all when it comes to television sport broadcasting. With over 20 years' experience in broadcast TV as a director, producer and writer, Davies has made a number of documentaries, including the RTS-nominated A Bat and Ball War, and worked on numerous sports events including the FIFA World Cup, Rugby World Cup, Olympic Games, Paralympics, Asian Games, Wimbledon, Open Championship and Tour de France.

His broadcast experience opened the door to event management roles, and Davies has worked as Broadcast Venue Manager on the past three Rugby World Cups. He was also the Broadcast Project Manager for the Special Olympics in 2019. During his early years, he worked on the legendary sports magazine show, Trans World Sport and his interviewed some of the biggest names in world sport, including Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, Maradona, Pele, a 13-year-old Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Wayne Gretzky, Kip Keino and even Whitney Houston and John Candy.

In this episode we talk about how commentators are chosen, the economics of sports broadcasting, how modern technology is changing how we watch sports and what the future holds in the digital age for viewers.

Davies lives in Nelson, New Zealand, where he lives with his wife and six (yes, it's not a typo !) children. He enjoys a number of sports including cycling, running, boxing, hunting, fishing and paddling. He is a frequent visitor to the UK, where he still has a base, and to Asia, where he does production work for the BBC.

Also, for our Real Science of Sport Members, stick around after the show for some bonus content as we continued our chat with Tony and got even more fascinating insights, including his thoughts on social media influencers as broadcast 'partners', why he doesn't buy into the 'all access' documentaries so frequently made about sports events, and his choice of best documentary ever made. If you're not a member, a small monthly donation gets you that bonus content, ad-free listening, exclusive shows and membership of our Discourse community, of which Tony is a member too!

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Show notes

On the show this week, a European Championships wrap featuring Nadia Battocletti's astonishing 10,000m finish and Audrey Werro's win over Keely Hodgkinson, a German sprinter under a doping cloud, world records in the pool, and a follow-up on peptides.

• (00:01:41) A follow-up to the peptides show with Mike, and the thing Ross wishes he had said. The anecdote that BPC-157 failed to fix someone's Achilles is the human version of publication bias, because nobody ever tells you about the thing that didn't work.
• (00:12:23) The European Championships format and the broadcast, which featured more talking heads than athletics on the BBC, and an athletic programme with far too little action relative to downtime.
• (00:16:52) The women's 800m, where Werro beat Hodgkinson for her fourth sub-1:55 of the year, and Bol ran a national record in third. Whose trajectory looks best in the medium to long-term?
• (00:28:26) Batocletti's exceptional sprint finish, and a Tim Noakes tweet asking why she could speed up at all. Ross explains the end spurt, the reserve we all hold back, and why this particular race proves rather less than it appears to.
• (00:31:52) A stat from Jason Henderson: Batocletti's last 200m was 28.17, Werro's in the 800m was 29.11. Not a typo, and we explain why the fatigue of an 800m is a completely different animal, and speculate that it's probably more common than you'd think for the 10000m races to finish faster than the 800m ones
• (00:34:37) Andreas Almgren's solo 10,000m, run at 26:43 pace for the final 8.8km. Tactical optimization and a signal for a sub 26:30 in the future?
• (00:40:22) Amy Hunt's four golds, and a newspaper headline that poured cold water on them.
• (00:43:42) Owen Ansah wins European gold under a doping cloud, having refused a test because he had a flight to catch. What counts as "compelling justification", and why a 2016 case suggests he is in trouble.
• (00:52:26) The tragic death of Fin Tarling, the near-impossibility of policing a 1,300km course, and Adam Hansen's call for better helmets, which are certified only to 19.5km/h.
• (00:59:47) Swimming, where Kate Douglass broke the 50m freestyle world record twice in a day, a 19-year-old German went under 14:30 for the 1500m free, and Lani Pallister beat Katie Ledecky over 800m for the first time.
• (01:10:46) And finally, South Africa versus New Zealand has branded itself "Rugby's Greatest Rivalry". Gareth is not buying it. Ross offers the context for why it's about more than rugby, but also great rugby

No news show next week, but there's an interview show planned for Monday, and the members' Applied show will take overtraining next week Friday.

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Everywhere you look people are talking about peptides. But what exactly are they, how do they work and how safe are they for human consumption? Mike and Ross review the evidence, discuss the politics that continue to muddy the waters around peptide efficacy and regulation, and examine the dangers of using untested peptides. The team also look into the role of the popular GLP-1's that have revolutionised diabetes and weight loss and the controversial BPC-17 peptide, touted as a miracle treatment for tissue repair.

Links

The Undark article that describes the history of BPC157

More on the FDA and the complex regulation of peptides

A report on one of the FDA decisions about peptides - in this case BPC157 and KPV

A paper from the discoverer of BPC157, who has published more than three-quarters of the research on it

The human safety study on BPC157, with its two participants

Systematic review of BPC157 evidence, suggesting promise but caution

A well researched article by Dr Eric Topol raising concerns about safety and regulatory decisions

Example of a public warning from a regulatory body, this one from South Africa

Follow the money - Fortune 500 piece on why deregulation could create a multibillion dollar market

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Show notes

On the show today, the physiology behind the best women's Grand Tour we can remember, and a doping ban that fits a pattern we have seen many times before.

• (00:01:00) The Tour de France Femmes was, we think, the best Grand Tour either of us has watched in years, and we explore the nine stages of unpredictable racing that had us intrigued, even if the record will show that Demi Vollering won four of them.
• (00:05:56) Kasia Niewiadoma's ride on Mont Ventoux, at somewhere between 5.3 and 5.6 W/kg for the climb, is arguably the greatest climbing performance in the history of women's cycling, and we place it against the published power duration curves to show just how far outside the 90th percentile it sits.
• (00:17:19) Niewiadoma also posted 9.9 W/kg for 86 seconds, and from that single Strava screenshot we work out her FTP and her W', the anaerobic "battery", which lets us answer the question everyone argued about, namely whether being blocked into that corner actually cost her time to rival Vollering. We think the answer is unequivocally yes, and the maths and the principle of pacing explains why.
• (00:25:50) Praise for Puck Pieterse, sympathy for Marlen Reusser and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, and a wonder about the 'mature' podium, and the prospect of a handover to the next generation in good time, just not 'our time'
• (00:41:41) The World U20 Championships, where a 17 year old ran 7:28 solo for 3000m, Tate Taylor doubled up in 9.94 and 19.83, and the ever-turning carousel of youth talent that is sometimes derailed by injury and sometimes deposed by the next young phenom
• (00:45:46) Jakob Ingebrigtsen returns and wins the European 5000m title in 13:16, off a slow race that played into his hands, and he explains, correctly, that a 5000m is not a test of speed but of how much speed you have left. He also promises he'll be "astonishingly a lot better" next time.
• (00:52:32) Jonah Koech gets a three year ban after an adverse passport finding. We explain how the biological passport actually works, why two suspicious samples means the values must have been wildly out of the norm, and why his 3.2% improvement should have invited scepticism long before the blood results did. Performance is not proof, but pattern recognition lives on, with this its latest illustration.
• (01:07:46) The WNBA has no eligibility policy, so two former NBA players have declared for the women's draft to prove the point. We discuss why choosing not to decide is itself a decision, how people are choosing to pretend a problem doesn't exist (or that it doesn't matter if it does), and contrast this with the WTA who have implemented screening for eligibility, and just gotten on with it
• (01:15:29) And finally, the origins of the steeplechase, which begins with two blokes, an Irish pub, a wager, and two church steeples. Plus a nutritionist on social media who watched 96 seconds and decided we had lost all credibility.

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Show notes

Josh Kerr, the Commonwealth Games, a stitch explained, the Tour de France Femmes, and yet another South African schoolboy rugby doping ban. In today's show:

• (00:00:38) We joked before Glasgow that this might be the last Commonwealth Games we ever see, and we were wrong. They survived in a cut-down, ten sport form, with India in 2030 and interest from Nigeria and New Zealand for 2034. We debate whether a smaller, cheaper games is actually the point rather than the problem, and what it means that the BBC's sub-one-million-pound bid was rejected, leaving Josh Kerr's mile watched by 200,000 people when Eilish McColgan's 10,000m in 2022 drew six million.
• (00:02:37) The performances, including Emmanuel Eseme of Cameroon running 9.83 in apocalyptic rain, three women under 11 seconds, and Josh Kerr's utterly dominant 3:54 mile off a jogged first kilometre. With the fastest mile in history relative to his peers and a devastating kick, how does anyone actually beat him now, and will the 1500m world record follow? Kerr says he is flying a little close to the sun, and we explain why staying in world record shape is like sitting in the death zone on Everest.
• (00:24:13) Laura Muir crossed the line 16th and collapsed after a stitch at 3km, so what actually causes one? We go through exercise related transient abdominal pain, the old diaphragmatic ischaemia theory, the newer parietal peritoneum irritation explanation, why shoulder tip pain is referred pain, and the risk factors including drinking before you run, being younger, being female, and having weaker trunk muscles.
• (00:33:56) Ingebrigtsen returns at the Euros over 5000m off two disrupted seasons and Achilles surgery, and we're not sure it'll be the comeback people hope for.
• (00:44:52) The Tour de France Femmes is brewing into a genuinely great race, with time gaps after the time-trial necessitating attacking racing as the Tour heads into its hilly and mountain stages. Niewiadoma and Ferrand-Prevot in particular need to claw back big time, while Reuser defends and Vollering waits ominously in pole-position. Instead the world's media is writing about padded bras. Why does cycling always shoot itself in the foot, and why is it a headline for the women when it was an incidental for the men?
• (00:47:40) Tadej Pogačar's estimated VO2max of over 100 is doing the rounds, using exactly the methods Ross was hammered for using on Contador and Froome fifteen years ago. We explain the modelling, why assumptions can spit out anything between 85 and 101, and what that means for comparing Pogačar to Pantani on Alpe d'Huez.
• (00:55:56) The full Markéta Vondroušová decision is out, and it reads very differently to the version that had tennis players outraged. Plus a hard look at South African schools rugby, where Deon Botes is the third schoolboy banned in months, this time for a supplement his father allegedly bought for cash from a stranger outside a pharmacy with "ultimate test booster" on the box.
• (01:12:47) Jannik Sinner walks away from a potential clean sweep of the Masters events to play less tennis before the US Open, while Carlos Alcaraz withdraws from Cincinnati and extends a wrist injury layoff that has now cost him May, June, July, and half of August. Two very different answers to the same question, and one that echoes Josh Kerr's approach to racing.
• (01:15:00) And finally, an update on Anna's ride around Australia. Nine days, 976km, 7,940m of climbing, one chain change, and three magpie attacks.

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Ross Hemingway, OBE, is a Sport & Exercise Medicine Practitioner at the Commando Training Centre for the Royal Marines. His clinical expertise centres on exertional collapse, in particular the prevention, acute management, and rehabilitation of exertional heat illness (EHI) in elite, amateur, and tactical athletes, and is recognised as a UK national expert in this field. Hemingway is also a member of the UK Heat Illness Advisory Group and a contributing author to the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care’s (FPHC) UK consensus statement on the management of Exertional Heat Illness.

In this interview, Hemingway breaks down the theory of heat illness, how it happens, prevalence, and the best ways of dealing with EHI during exercise.

Alongside his clinical practice, he is also the founder of Nereus Medical Ltd and inventor of the patented I-CWIK, a lightweight, robust and clinically proven system developed to provide effective cold-water immersion of heat stroke casualties in the pre-hospital and hospital environment.

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SHOW NOTES

The EHI Consensus Statement website

The Full EHI Article, of which Ross is lead author

One of the studies Ross alluded to, this one from the World Champs in Doha

Another paper he mentioned, discussing athlete management ahead of the Olympic Games

The baboon model for heatstroke discussed on the show

We published a study years back documenting some heatstrokes in SA endurance events

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Show notes

This week we recap Tadej Pogačar's record-breaking Tour de France, and then get into the meat of it: why anti-doping leans so heavily on investigation and targeted testing, with insights from our interview with Brett Clothier, head of athletics' Athletics Integrity Unit.

• (02:24) Tadej Pogačar wins a fifth Tour de France in what Ross reckons is the most dominant display he has seen in any sport, and we dig into the numbers behind it, including an estimated 7 W/kg on Alpe d'Huez that obliterates Pantani's old mark, why the yellow jersey was effectively settled by stage six, and why the racing everywhere else still made it a decent watch.
• (13:55) The weight-loss double standard. Remco Evenepoel reportedly dropped around nine pounds for the Tour with barely a murmur, while Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's weight loss dominated the coverage last year. We ask why the reaction differs by sex, and where the line sits between periodised, medically supervised leanness and a genuine eating-disorder risk.
• (19:42) That Montmartre finale, with Van der Poel and Pogačar breaking clear on the last climb, van der Poel's heroic's to hold off the chasing pack, and Jasper Philipsen's remarkable judgement to "win" by not winning against his team-mate. Plus, we ponder whether the GC should really be neutralised so early on the final day? We say let them race.
• (32:37) The headline this week: why testing alone rarely catches the big fish, and why investigation and targeted testing do. Prompted by the furore over 2am and 5am testing at the Tour, we hear from Brett Clothier of the Athletics Integrity Unit, and explain the biological passport, the micro-dosing of EPO, fast-clearance methods, gene-doping fears, and why a genuinely "transparent" statement about a target test is close to impossible without prejudicing everyone involved.
• (46:26) A look ahead to the women's Tour de France, the contenders including Vollering, Blasi, Niewiadoma, Ferrand-Prévot and Reusser. With storylines galore, it features the return of a time trial, and French TV figures showing the women's race is closer to the men's than you might expect.
• (51:48) Are the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow still worth watching without the stars? Gareth is won over by the weightlifting, and we ask whether you really need the very best in the world to enjoy sport.
• (58:49) The Ultimate Championship, athletics' new 10 million dollar, three-night, TV-first format, complete with a black infield, real-time win probabilities, Mondo Duplantis on stadium DJ duty, and no country quotas. We react, and Ross pitches what he would add to the broadcast
• (64:16) Josh Kerr reveals how the pacing lights were slowed over the final 100 metres of his mile record to create the illusion he was beating them. Clever theatre, or are we being deceived?
• (67:00) And finally, Discourse member Ana sets off on a 15,000km "big lap" of Australia on her gravel bike. We wish her luck, and start plotting the data she should share with our listener community!

Links

• This is the ITA statement during the Tour - it's really all they can say and expecting more is a day dream!
• The article on gene doping - speculative and sounds like sci-fi, but might it be happening
• The paper on micro-dosing and detection challenges
• Plugge on how the tests brought doping back to cycling
• Preview of the TDF for Women
• Details on the World Athletics Ultimate Championships

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Quick heads up before we start: this is not a brand new episode. If you are one of our Members you will have heard it in full about six weeks ago, when we released it as a Members' only Applied show. But we thought it was too interesting and relevant to stay behind the paywall, so we have cut it down into this shorter version and opened it up to everyone, partly because we want sports science to reach as many people as possible, and partly because it is a taste of exactly what supporters get every week, ad free, alongside our Discourse community! So join now and get it early, ad-free and with post-pod chats!

The show was sparked by Gareth's admission that he paces his Zwift time trials by "trying not to die", which, as Ross points out, is already a sign the pacing has gone wrong. Pacing is not about reacting to fatigue once it arrives, but about managing effort now based on its future consequences. Using the analogy of a budget, we look at the two things it defends against, depletion of fuel like carbohydrate and creatine phosphate, and accumulation of heat, hydrogen ions, and other metabolites, and why good pacing is a skill that has to be learned.

From there we get applied. Why has elite pacing become flatter over the generations, why can you never bank time in a long event when the 400 and 800 metres break that rule, and how should you actually pace a hilly time trial? Drawing on Remco Evenepoel's world title ride, we anchor everything to FTP, unpack the concept of W', your anaerobic battery, and show why the extra effort you should spend climbing or into a headwind is far smaller than instinct suggests.

Whether you are chasing a marathon PB, a Zwift time trial, or simply trying not to blow up halfway, there are practical lessons here to get you to the finish faster. And if you enjoy it, this is only half of the full discussion. The complete version, plus a new Applied show every week, is waiting for you in the supporters club.

Links

• Ross' PhD was on the anticipatory regulation of performance. That is, pacing. This is the main summary article that came out of that PhD and related work
• The physiological regulation of pacing strategy for performance. Another review article from Ross' PhD work
• The Hazard Score, and how RPE interacts with distance remaining to regulate pace, as discussed on the podcast
• The paper that analyses world records and shows the surprising finding that performances have been unlocked with faster starts and smaller endspurts
• Entropy and positive pacing in the 800m. Nice accurate conclusion, the rest, we aren't so sure we understand!

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Show notes

The big story this week is another Tour de France anti-doping row, with race leaders Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard woken to give samples at 5am and 2am. But first, we discuss a forgettable World Cup final and a long overdue Mile world record

• (00:01:27) Spain beat Argentina to win the World Cup, in what Ross and Gareth reckon was the worst final in living memory. We discuss a game in which Argentina seemed intent on being regressive and aggressive, why the best player in the world was left stranded, the role fatigue and the extra day's rest may have played, and whether a solid tournament deserves better than a grudging seven out of ten.
• (00:16:14) Josh Kerr does exactly what he said he would and breaks Hicham El Guerrouj's 27 year old mile world record at the London Diamond League, running near-perfect 55 second laps on route to his 222. Point 66. We get into his near-perfect even pace, how wavelight technology has reduced the risk and unburdened the athlete to chase physiological limits, whether that cheapens anything, and why the 1500m record should surely be next.
• (00:35:23) The big story. Pogačar and Vingegaard were dope-tested at 5am and 2am on the morning of a mountain stage, and all hell broke loose. We explain why an 11pm to 6am block is normally sacrosanct and exempt from doping, but why allowances have to be made to test athletes within it on occasion. We the "serious and specific suspicion" exception that received judicial sign-off under French law, what that implies, and why we will probably never know. Vingegaard later crashed out with a broken collarbone, so we ask whether the two are linked, and the extent to which this is a wake-up call for cycling (and some of its fans), or just more of the same?
• (00:59:36) And finally, the Commonwealth Games open in Glasgow this weekend, pared back to ten sports and stuck behind a paywall. Did anyone notice? Has the world moved on? We say a fond, faintly baffled farewell.

Links

• Some stats from the one-sided World Cup Final
• How the Mile was won: Some analysis of Kerr's record, including the splits Gareth read out
• Some details on Josh Kerr's custom shoe
• Ross' brief thoughts on the early morning testing controversy on X
• More detail on the exemption made, judicial approval and nature of suspicions (good), along with some speculation about Seixas and a call for transparency (silly)
• Vingegaard's team on the crash and possible reasons for it

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Show notes

This week our headline topic is a "concussion sensor" being trialled by some teams at the Tour de France, and why it is a welcome innovation, but one that, for now, invites potentially dangerous false hope. We also take a spin through the rest of the week in sport, covering football, cycling, tennis and track and field. Oh, and hotdogs.

• (00:00:20) The World Cup nears its finale, and Spain utterly outplayed France to reach the final, making fools of our predictions after Gareth handed France to Ross. We get into why the France-Spain dynamic flipped so completely, the scarcity of penalty shootouts this tournament, the mooted expansion to 64 teams, hydration-break ad money paying for the broadcast rights, the ref cam, and the goal-line technology row over the England-Norway "wire" incident.
• (00:16:18) Following our David Bailey podcast, we ask whether the peloton is simply scared of Tadej Pogačar, whose dominance at the Tour has riders like Ben Healy and Florian Lipowitz shaking their heads in bewilderment. We also unpack why "marginal gains" and sports science only ever matter as a point of difference, borrowing points-of-parity and points-of-difference thinking from marketing.
• (00:24:16) Our headline piece. A "concussion" sensor sitting behind the helmet's BOA dial is being trialled by some teams the Tour, and we explain why the name is a dangerous misnomer. A helmet-mounted device measures helmet acceleration, not the brain, may be triggered off by cobbles, and can never be diagnostic. We explain that it could be used as a triage tool, not a diagnostic one that replaces road-side assessments. Drawing on rugby's mouthguard data, hundreds of thousands of head-acceleration events with poor sensitivity and predictive value, and the case of Torstein Traen, who passed a roadside check yet was later diagnosed with concussion, Ross explains that this is a genuine safety opportunity, but only if cycling gets the framing and the use of it right.
• (00:40:06) A wrap of the Wimbledon finals, with remarkable mental resilience from the new women's champion Linda Noskova, and Jannik Sinner's dominant serve. We look at Sinner's serve speed and placement, and how Zverev manages type 1 diabetes on court.
• (00:45:53) A rush of track action from the Monaco Diamond League, including Emmanuel Wanyonyi's 1000m world record and a brave but doomed attempt at the 3000m WR by Birke Haylom, who paid for what ended up being a pacing error by coming last. We also look ahead to the London Diamond League, headlined by Josh Kerr's much-hyped mile world record attempt, the women's 800m with Hodgkinson and Bol, and a stacked men's 800m.
• (00:57:50) Does South African rugby have a doping problem? A new positive for junior Springbok prop Kai Pratt, SAIDS rejecting the "witch hunt" framing, and Ross digs into the numbers: testing down more than six-fold in a decade, South Africa accounting for one in five rugby doping cases worldwide, and an anti-doping body whose budget has flatlined. We argue why "sour grapes" is no defence, and why the answer is to test more, not deflect.
• (01:04:57) And Finally, Joey Chestnut wins another July 4th hot dog title, with the Kobayashi method as competitive eating's "super shoes", and an Ironman in Swansea sends us down the rabbit hole of how organisers conjure those economic-impact and "media value" figures, plus the leader who rode straight into a stationary ambulance.

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