The International Olympic Committee have created a new digital social campaign aimed at young people. Called ‘The Best of Us’, the IOC aims to build youth engagement with the Olympic Movement.

Chamball is a new conceptual sport which combines elements of dodgeball and martial arts.

In preparation for the NYC Marathon, outdoor clothing company Icebreaker has set up a live seamstress in the window of Paragon Sports in NYC to convert old synthetic running t-shirts into shoe bags for free.

A small but vibrant community is developing around the extreme pogo stick.

On August 21, the third invocation of the Rental Car Rally will be rolling from NYC to Detroit. The brainchild of  StreetWars‘ “Supreme Commander” and Steve Bryant of Wiimbledon, the rally is more Mermaid Parade than NASCAR–check out our post and some photos from their San Francisco to Yuma expedition.
There is no set route, but each team must hit pre-defined checkpoints, which include an abandoned ghost town in Pennsylvania with a mine fire burning beneath the streets and a drive thru strip club. The motley crew will then spend the night partying in a downtown Detroit hotel casino before [...]

For most of us, sports touch our lives on a daily basis. We play sports, watch sports on TV, read about sports in the newspapers, talk to friends about them, buy merchandise and attend sporting events. Sports take us away from our daily routines and entertain us. But while people realize that sports need sponsors (in fact, 74% actually think sponsorship is good), their corporatization can move them away from their fans. With ticket prices sky-rocketing, hospitality areas taking up all the good seats and every square inch of the arena emblazoned with logos, sponsorships are making sports less about [...]

There’s a lot of potential for digital self-measurement–pedometers, calorie counters, and heart monitors all promise to make our workouts more efficient. We’ve noted that the best way to do this would be through the mobile phone, but this does present limitations. For example, the iPhone Heart Monitor requires that you hold the phone (or headphone mic) up to your pulse. Perhaps not so convenient mid-workout. So we like the Polar Bluetooth WearLink heart rate monitor; it can measure your heart rate while you run without you doing a thing.
Nokia likes it too. It has announced a partnership with Polar to [...]

Andrea Klimková and Peter Kručay at AK2 designed this recently completed sports center that’s situated along the busy Einsteinova Road in Bratislava, Slovakia. The press release explains some of the thinking that went into the concept:
The long awaited final look of the building that stands in the row of previous experiments in designing commercial architecture of high standard design on the narrow and complicated plots between the highway ring of the city and the old train railway is visible to the panoramatic views on the right bank of the Danube river. The tension to produce a piece of contemporary architecture [...]

ESPN, the sports media arm of the Walt Disney corporation, has released a beta version of its streamlined site with the fully featured version set to go live on January 5th.  The launch comes at a time when ESPN has witnessed ad sales lagging on its network of television channels due in no small part to the slowing economy. Reducing clutter, particularly on the homepage, became the clear goal with the year long redesign,  a move the company hopes will attract more users in the sought after 18-34 year old male demographic, in turn making the site more appealing to [...]

Phillip George is attempting to heal ethnic tensions within Sydney’s beach culture with a range of Islam-inspired surfboards.  The Australian artist embellished thirty ‘Inshalla’ (God willing) surfboards with motifs taken from Islamic art for his recently opened Borderlands exhibition.  The project was seven years in the making, gathering steam after the 2005 Cronulla beach Lebanese race riots.  George traveled throughout Australia and the Middle East for inspiration, noting the importance of sport to Australia’s developing cultural identity:
We are so culturally insignificant in the world that we rely on sport to booster our national pride.
I have actually transposed a lot of [...]

Remote Impact is a fighting video game that utilizes a screen to project your opponent.  To fight you must attack the screen (don’t worry, it’s padded) and respond with dodges.  If this is too similar to classic boxing, one can simply turn the fight into an all out slug-fest, which may work best, as the video below would make it seem.  It’s like Wii-Fit with ‘roid-rage.  Makezine explains:
A life-sized silhouette of the remote participant is projected on the interface, which resembles a mattress standing against a wall. A unique sensing system measures the location and intensity of each impact. Players [...]

During a football match between Real Madrid and Villareal in 2005, Zinédine Zidane (yes, the head butt guy) was filmed by 17 cameras non-stop throughout the match – “registering his every step, movement and facial expression; how he enthusiastically throws himself into the game, but also how he at times gazes distractedly around, tests the grass on the pitch with his boots, or repeatedly adjusts his socks.”
Taking an artistic crack at documenting athletics, filmmakers Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s “Zidane – A 21st Century Portrait” is a 90 minute long film that will be showing at Magasin 3 in Stockholm [...]

Reebok have just released a new pair of basketball sneakers that lets wearers scribble something new on them for every game. Aesthetically, the kicks look like most any other basketball sneaker, but what sets the ATR Talkin’ Crazy apart, is the dry-erase upper and included marker.
A quick look at the website indicates Reebok are trying to play up on the whole smack-talk concept.  John Lynch, Reebok’s vice president of US marketing had this to say:
For as long as there have been basketball kicks, people have been writing on them, but now the Talkin Krazy gives consumers the freedom to [...]

We like the Nike Hindsight, an innovative glasses idea from NY-based designer Billy May. The sport shades use fresnel lenses to give bicyclists extended peripheral vision, an extra 25º on each side beyond the normal limit of 180º. This means bicyclists can see (and avoid!) oncoming side traffic that would normally be out of seeing range.
YankoDesign explains how Nike Hindsight could be useful for non-bicyclists too:
…A less obvious advantage is reducing the necessary head rotation to check behind. Though it was intended for bicyclists, there’s a myriad of sports and activities where a greater field of view becomes an advantage. [...]

We’re big supporters of any product that makes bike riding more palatable. As superficial as it might seem, many people either don’t wear helmets, or don’t ride at all, because traditional bike helmets are so aesthetically unappealing. So it’s refreshing to hear, via Swiss Miss, about these new Danish helmets that are designed to look like cute little hats.
However, several astute commenters on the Swiss Miss post point to some reasons these helmets might not be viable on the streets of America (or anywhere): The fabric cover is not designed to slide smoothly on the road like the traditional shiny [...]