Secret Squirrel Club Helps Power British Cycling

Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan celebrates as he crosses the finish line to win the gold medal during the Men’s Road Cycling race at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Saturday, July 28, 2012, in London. Rigoberto Uran of Colombia, left, took the silver medal. Photo: Christophe Ena/AP

LONDON — Mark Cavendish failed today to win Great Britain’s first gold medal of the 2012 Summer Games. The heavy favorite in the men’s cycling road race found himself out of luck after a 30-man breakaway established itself about 40 km from the finish.

Despite the best efforts of Team GB, Alexandr Vinokurov of Kazakstan won after a head-to-head sprint with Columbia’s Rigoberto Uran Uran down The Mall, just around the corner from Buckingham Palace. American Taylor Phinney just missed a medal in fourth place, something he called “about the worst place you can finish at the Olympics.”

Despite the British failure to win a much-anticipated gold, a long-term technical research project lead by British Cycling has laid the groundwork for the country’s stunning success in the sport over the past decade. In the past two Olympics, Team GB has won a stunning 18 medals in cycling. Last week, Bradley Wiggins became the first British rider to win the Tour de France, and Cavendish won the World Championship road race last year.

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Olympics Physics: New Platform Is No Chip Off the Old Starting Block

This file photo from Nov. 11, 2008 shows swimmers starting from the new platform design making its Olympic debut in London. Photo: Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images

Olympic swimmers don’t just dive into the pool like the rest of us. They start on a block called, appropriately enough, a starting block. London will see the Olympic debut of a track-style starting block with an inclined surface and a lip at the back.

The blocks, first used in international competition at the Swimming World Cup in 2009, let swimmers push off from a crouch with the rear leg at a 90-degree angle, optimizing the power of their launch. The block also can detect false starts.

Why does that even matter to a physicist? Because it’s all about acceleration.

Let me start with a simplified case of a swimmer on a flat block, even if the old-style blocks weren’t exactly flat. If the swimmer wants to dive off, he must push on the block to accelerate into a dive. Here is a diagram showing the swimmer and the forces on the swimmer during a start:

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Olympic Archers Target Better Gear for Straight Shots

Brady Ellison, competing in October. Photo: usembassylondon/Flickr

Brady Ellison is the top archer on the planet right now. At 23, he’s ranked No. 1 on the recurve bow, a feat made all the more impressive by the fact he didn’t pick up a recurve bow until six years ago.

Before that, he fired a compound bow, an entirely different animal. To switch from one to the other, and excel at it, would be like Michael Phelps winning a medal in diving.

“Usually it’s very difficult to go from compound to recurve,” says George Tekmitchov, an engineer at Hoyt Archery, which provides bows to the World Archery Federation and the U.S. Olympic Team.

Wait. Back up. What’s a recurve bow?

The recurve bow is the antithesis of a compound bow, which uses a system of pulleys and multiple strings to accelerate an arrow. A compound bow is more energy efficient, and therefore offers greater accuracy, velocity and distance. The design was patented in 1969, and compound bows are the most common style you’ll find in the United States.

The recurve, on the other hand, looks much like the bows you see in movies like The Hunger Games and Brave. They feature a single string and long arms, or limbs. They’ve been around in some form since 1200 B.C., but they are anything but primitive. In fact, they’re some of the most high-tech tools you’ll see at the 2012 Summer Games.

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Olympic Badminton Players ‘Don’t Drink Beer and Cook Out’

U.S. badminton player Howard Bach throws down with teammate Tony Gunawan during the World Badminton Championship in this photo from 2009. Photo: Manish Swarup/AP

Howard Bach wants you to know something about badminton: It’s not a sissy sport.

Oh yeah, everyone has played something they call badminton, usually with a beer in one hand and meat grilling nearby. That is to badminton as your daily commute is to the Indianapolis 500. Real badminton will kick your ass. The best players hit a shuttlecock more than 200 mph, and chasing it requires the speed of a sprinter and the stamina of a distance runner. Bach has on many occasions sent fellow Olympians in other sports stumbling away after 10 minutes on the court at the Olympic Training Center.

Elite badminton is all but unheard of in the United States — we’re sending just three players, all Californians, to London — but it’s big in Southeast Asia. Bach was born in Vietnam, where his father was a standout player, and came to the United States at age 3. He was playing two years later and competing at 9. A long list of tournament titles followed, along with two previous Olympaids. Now, at 33, Bach is headed to the 2012 Summer Games for one last Olympics.

Bach has teamed up with Tony Gunawan, one of the best doubles players ever. Gunawan won gold for Indonesia in 2000 and became a U.S. citizen last year, making him something of a ringer for the squad. Gunawan’s otherworldly moves on the floor often set up Bach’s power shots. They’ve played before — they won the world championship in 2005 — and they are the United States’ best shot at a medal in ages. Reaching the podium, though, will require getting through second-seeded Jae Sung Chung and Yong Dae Lee of Korea and teams from Malaysia and Japan — the toughest grouping in the tournament.

We caught up with Bach to talk about playing with one of the games’ greats, what a solid performance in London could mean for badminton here at home and how the sport saved his father’s life.

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32 Olympic Venues, in One Cool Map

Olympic Venues in London map by LondonTown.com

As Mark McClusky, our man on the ground in London, noted, there’s a giddy sense of wonder in the air at the Olympic Village as the 2012 Summer Games finally get underway.

London is the first city in the world to have hosted the Games three times — it also hosted the 1908 and 1948 Games — and it spent seven years and £11 billion preparing 32 venues for the 302 events that will be contested. The folks at LondonTown.com created a cool map describing them all and shared it with us to share with you.

Enjoy, and be sure to check out all our coverage of the 2012 Summer Games, live from London.

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