Articles tagged as Sports | Smithsonian Magazine

New Research

No Matter How Much You Practice, If You Don’t Have Natural Talent You Still Might Never Be the Best, Some Experts Think

Yet other researchers think that different factors, such as the quality and timing of practice, matter most

July 15, 2014

The yellow card is an elegant design solution that has been adopted by several sports.

World Cup 2014

Who Invented the Yellow Card?

Penalty cards are a surprisingly recent creation that were, perhaps unsurprisingly, inspired by traffic lights

July 8, 2014

As Uruguayan soccer player Luis Suárez demonstrated yesterday, sometimes people bite others. Here are five diseases you can get from human chomps.

June 25, 2014

New football technology--seen here in a prototype--could outfit balls with a transmitter that helps track their location.

Tech Watch

Ball-Tracking Tech for (American) Football

The World Cup has its own system. But new technology could help spot the pigskin through a 10-lineman pileup on the gridiron.

June 25, 2014

Cool Finds

Some World Cup Teams Ban Sex Before Games, Even Though Science Says It May Help Performance on the Field

Other teams, however, are all in favor of pre-game sex

June 19, 2014

Nao robots race—slowly—to the open ball.

World Cup 2014

RoboCup: Building a Team of Robots That Will Beat The World Cup Champions

By 2050, robotic experts at the annual world robotic’s championship hope to create a team of robots that can best the winning World Cup team

June 18, 2014

“Soccer” isn’t an Americanism at all—it’s a British word

June 16, 2014

Residents walk near a destroyed house after a landslide in Teresopolis January 15, 2011.

Flooding in southeastern Brazil has killed at least nine

June 10, 2014

World Cup 2014

Statistics Say That Brazil Will Probably Win the World Cup

Analyzing players’ transfer values to calculate a team’s overall market value, however, predicts that Spain will win

June 6, 2014

World Cup 2014

Will Brazil’s World Cup Stadium in the Middle of the Amazon Pay Off?

The city of Manaus hopes that a new soccer stadium, built for the World Cup, will become a post-tournament boon to the economy

June 3, 2014

The climbers are still missing, but authorities suspect they were buried by an avalanche

June 2, 2014

A female German fighter rests after competing in the first World International Medieval Combat Championship.

Cool Finds

The World Championships in Medieval Combat

Steps from a 15th century Spanish castle, combatants took to arms

May 13, 2014

Supporters gather at the finish line of the Boston Marathon yesterday to commemorate the victims of last year's bombings.

Meb Keflezighi’s win at the Boston Marathon is first American victory since Lisa Widenbach’s in 1985

April 21, 2014

Cool Finds

The Wheelie Was Invented in 1890

A stunt bicyclist named Daniel Canary claims to be the first person to master the trick

April 21, 2014

With at least 12 dead, today is worse than the day in 1996 when eight people were killed in a storm

April 18, 2014

Cool Finds

Almost 2 Million People Ran a U.S. Half Marathon Last Year—And Most of Them Were Women

Fitness trendsters, take note: it’s about time you go run 13.1 miles

April 11, 2014

Cool Finds

Combat Juggling Is Your New Favorite Sport, Now That You Know It Exists

The premise of combat juggling is pretty simple: juggle three items, and try to get your opponent to drop his three

April 7, 2014

Cool Finds

Want to Run a Marathon in North Korea? Here’s Your Chance

For the first time, the Mangyongdae Prize Marathon in Pyongyang, North Korea, is open to amateurs

April 3, 2014

Charles Rowell: The celebrated pedestrian, c. 1879.

Cool Finds

America’s Favorite Sport Used to Be… Competitive Walking

Pedestrianism was popular in the late 19th century

April 1, 2014

A labor board ruled that football players at Northwestern University are “employees” and have the right to form unions

April 1, 2014