If you are intending to score in a FIFA World Cup match, should you score the night before? This is the question that prompts coaches to set rules, players to seek understanding from wives and lovers, and fans to debate fervently, with many adamantly believing that abstaining from sex improves athletes’ performance on the field.
The age-old argument was triggered anew by Mexico coach Miguel Herrera, who told newspaper Reforma last month that he expects his players to refrain from any “horizontal samba” during their stay in Brazil, where the tournament opens next week.
The remark sparked a lively debate in the media, prompting Herrera to clarify that he was not banning sex, just urging his players to behave prudently, as proposed by his Brazil counterpart, Luis Felipe Scolari, who has cautioned against attempting any bedroom “acrobatics.”
Yet not everyone is so reserved. Colombian soccer icon Carlos “El Pibe” Valderrama lived up to his candid reputation by saying that the teams he captained in the 1990s would have made it further in World Cup play had the players not been forced into chastity.
Theories linking sex to athletic performance date to at least the ancient Greeks, who believed that safeguarding a man’s sperm was important for spurring the aggression needed to perform well in the arena. However, there is little scientific evidence to support abstinence as a performance enhancer.
A 1995 study in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness said that performance on a treadmill test was unaffected by whether the participant had coitus 12 hours before.
Experts say lovemaking is not strenuous enough an activity for otherwise healthy people to have an effect on sporting performance. A University of Montreal study last year found that men burn about 100 calories on average during sex — or about the equivalent of 20 minutes of yard work.
Many athletes and experts even swear by a little nookie the night before a big game, claiming it relieves stress and induces restorative sleep.
More than sex itself, what worries coaches is all-night revelry and boozing. Scandalous reports about carousing athletes are not uncommon, such as those of a party with prostitutes involving Spain players at last year’s Confederations Cup in Brazil.
“It comes down to coaches not trusting the little devils,” said Pamela Peeke, a physician and spokeswoman for the American College of Sports Medicine.
In September 2010, two Mexico players were suspended and several fined for indiscipline over a post-game party.
Local media reported that prostitutes were involved and sports analysts speculate that a six-month suspension given to Carlos Vela — widely considered Mexico’s top striker — is why he declined to play for the national team this year.
Many European teams, like Germany and Spain, strictly ban on sex before matches, allowing wives and girlfriends to visit players only on off days.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier