If
You Want to Win in Sports, Wear Red
By
JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, AP Science Writer Thu May 19, 7:53 AM ET
If
winning is everything, British anthropologists have some advice:
Wear red. Their survey of four sports at the 2004 Olympic Games in
Athens shows competitors were more likely to win their contests if
they wore red uniforms or red body armor.
"Across
a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently
associated with a higher probability of winning," report
Russell A. Hill and Robert A. Barton of the University of Durham in
England. Their findings are in Thursday's issue of the journal
Nature.
Red
coloration is associated with aggression in many animals. Often it
is sexually selected so that scarlet markings signal male dominance.
Just
think of the red stripes on the scowling face of the male Mandrill,
Africa's largest monkey species. But red is not exclusively a male
trait. It's the female black widow spider that is venomous and
displays a menacing red dot on her abdomen.
Similarly,
the color's effect also may subconsciously intimidate opponents in
athletic contests, especially when the athletes are equal in skill
and strength, the researchers suggest.
In
their survey, the anthropologists analyzed the results of four
combat sports at the summer games: boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman
wrestling and freestyle wrestling.
In
those events, the athletes were randomly assigned red protective
gear and other sportwear.
Athletes
wearing red gear won more often in 16 of 21 rounds of competition in
all four events.
The
effect was the same regardless of weight classes, too: 19 of 29
classes had more red winners, and only four rounds had more blue
winners.
The
red effect also might come into play in team sports.
The
anthropologists made a preliminary analysis of the Euro 2004
international soccer tournament, in which teams wore jerseys of
different colors in different matches. They found that five teams
scored more goals and won more often when they wore shirts that were
predominantly red, as opposed to blue or white jerseys.
Scientists
don't precisely known how wearing red might give athletes an
advantage. But the color delivers implicit messages of vigor and
danger. When people get angry, their faces turn red. It's also a
reason why stop signs are red. So are most Ferraris.
A
case can perhaps be made that most of the recent winners of U.S.
sports championships have at least a touch of red on their uniforms:
among pro teams, the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, the
Detroit Pistons and in college sports, the USC Trojans.
They also discovered a well known softball team in Orange County,
California named En Fuego who is successful while wearing red.
But
it's the gracious sport of golf that offers the best example. Tiger
Woods wears an iconic red shirt on Sundays, the day when most
tournaments are won.
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