Conditions Simulator Gives Sailors a Competitive Edge

Stu Bannatyne and Adam Minoprio on watch aboard Camper with Emirates Team New Zealand during the fifth leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2011. A new simulation tool allows sailors and naval architects to better model waves and wind. Photo: Hamish Hooper/CAMPER ETNZ/Volvo Ocean Race via Flickr

Creating an accurate model of wind and wave behavior has long challenged sailors and naval architects. The problem’s always been the niggling gap between mathematical calculations and physical tests. But science now has a way of closing that margin that could revolutionize sailing with a simulation said to behave as accurately as real-world tests.

Ignazio Maria Viola, head of the the Yacht and Superyacht Research Group at Newcastle University, set out to simulate how water and air behave around a boat in different sea and wind conditions. The goal was to predict how a yacht will behave during a particular race under particular circumstances. He worked with the Yacht Research Unit of the University of Auckland and the Italian supercomputer center CILEA to develop a virtual test he says matches physical trials. The models could save race teams money and help them prepare more thoroughly for events like the Volvo Ocean Race or America’s Cup by modeling different boats in different conditions.

“We believe that today we are experiencing an overturning of the traditional hierarchy between physical and numerical experiments, which will become more and more dramatic in the future years,” Viola said.

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Competitive Eaters Gobble Hot Dogs for Spots at Nathan’s Table

Photos: Sol Neelman/Wired

QUEENS, New York — When it comes to competitive eating, timing is everything.

“A rookie eater often suffers from hubris, thinking anyone can do this and often comes out of the gate too fast,” said Rich Shea, the co-founder of Major League Eating, the “sport’s” sanctioning body. “A more successful eater knows how to pace themselves. There’s a skill involved with manipulating the food.”

“Manipulating food” is another way of saying “stuffing your face with enough grub to choke a horse,” which is, essentially, what competitive eating is all about. The finest, um, athletes, in the game gather Wednesday at Coney Island for Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, or as Shea calls it, “the Super Bowl of competitive eating.”

I was in the Big Apple a few weeks ago and caught one of the dozen qualifying rounds for the annual contest, which dates to 1916. I may never eat another hot dog again. Four hundred frankfurters and buns were prepared for the event outside Citi Field. “We make sure to have plenty,” said one of the cats in charge of dogs. That’s nothing. For the big contest on Wednesday, organizers will lay out 2,000 dogs and buns.

Fifteen men and women were lined up at the buffet table, which organizers had thoughtfully laid out with new bottles of deli style mustard and cups of water. Many competitors dunk their dogs to soak the buns. That makes them easier to swallow. Yeah, a soggy dog looks as gross as it sounds.

Honestly, I’m not sure of the proper etiquette for photographing a hot dog eating contest. Should I have arrived with an empty stomach so I don’t risk vomiting? Or should I have arrived with a full stomach so it’s not so easily upset? I can’t lie. Before the first heat, I was craving a Chicago-style dog. But seeing competitors devour dogs quickly killed my appetite.

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Skater Recreates Iconic Skateboards of Yesteryear

All John Greeley wanted was an original Powell Peralta Mike McGill F-14 Jet Fighter skateboard. He scoured eBay for one of the three-decade-old decks with legible graphics, but no dice. Classic skateboards from companies like Powell and Santa Cruz, coveted for their history and artwork, are almost always torn up—the graphics ground off by asphalt, curbs, coping, and just about anything else a skater can shred on. So Greeley, executive chef at New York’s 21 Club, took matters into his own hands—he remade the boards himself.

Each replication took weeks or even months. Greeley bought blank decks from Factory13, an LA-based custom board maker. He then searched out battered vintage decks and scanned their graphics. Next, Greeley used Photoshop to painstakingly piece together the art from three or four scraped-up decks—creating a pixel-perfect template of the original. Finally, he hand-screened the design onto each new board.

Over the years Greeley has re-created more than 30 iconic boards from his youth, including the popular Hosoi Rising Sun and complete series from Powell, Zorlac, and Dogtown. “I may have the largest archive of original deck graphics anywhere,” he flexes. Replicate or die.

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No Coin Toss, No Run-Off in Olympic Trial After Sprinter Withdraws

EUGENE, Oregon — There won’t be a coin toss or run-off to determine the third and final spot on the women’s 100-meter U.S. Olympic team after all. Jeneba Tarmoh, who finished in a dead heat against Allyson Felix in the 100 meters trial here, has withdrawn from the team.

Tarmoh and Felix were to face off today in an unprecedented winner-take-all sprint to determine who would go to London. But Tarmoh made an unprecedented move of her own this morning when she withdrew from consideration for the women’s 100 meters team.

“I Jeneba Tarmoh have decided to decline my 3rd place position in the 100m dash to Allyson Felix,” she wrote in an e-mail forwarded to USA Track & Field head Stephanie Hightower on Monday morning. “I understand that with this decision I am no longer running the 100m dash in the Olympic Games and will be an alternate for the event. As an alternate I understand that I will be asked to run if another 100m runner decides not to for personal reasons, and/or on the 4x100m relay.”

The surprise announcement brought a dramatic Olympic track and field trials to a close earlier than expected.

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The Fast and the Fearless: Athletes Go for the Gold in the X Games

The X Games double back-flipped through its 18th year of extreme sports, providing no shortage of awesomeness from famous, and infamous, athletes. Records were set, rivalries were reignited and the crashes that come with pushing the limits stunned audiences as some of the world’s most fearless athletes competed in downtown Los Angeles.

The event drew familiar faces like longtime favorite Paul “P-Rod” Rodriguez, who won his fourth gold medal in Skateboard Street, setting a record. Jamie Bestwick, 40, made the second six-peat (is that even a word?) in X Games history when he won the BMX Vert competition, and Garrett Reynolds won his fifth gold in BMX Street.

Perhaps one of the most anticipated moments of the X Games came when Travis Pastrana took the wheel during the RallyCross event. However, this year yielded disappointing results when Pastrana was rammed into the wall by Andy Scott, a crash that put both drivers out of action during his qualifying heat. The Games also saw a marriage proposal when Taka Higashino proposed to his girlfriend the night after winning the Moto X FreeStyle event.

As expected, big air is the name of the X Games, and Ronnie Renner and Matt Buyten sharpened their rivalry in the Sony Moto X Step up competition to break Buyten’s world record 37-foot jump. Renner eventually set a new record, outjumping Buyten by 10 feet. While that’s a crazy number to consider, even crazier was 15-year old Mitchie Brusco, who landed the very first MegaRamp 900 during the Skateboard Big Air Eliminations.

This year was a clash of the generations, with old and new athletes alike showing up to assert their dominance. However, right after Brusco landed the first MegaRamp 900, 12-year old Tom Schaar landed two 900s in the second heat, proving that the next generation of riders is going to keep taking the sport into once unimagined frontiers.

For all the results, click here.

The Fast and the Fearless: Athletes Go for the Gold in the X Games

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