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Prior studies have investigated consumer-based economic discrimination from a number of contexts in the sport industry. This study seeks to further such a line of inquiry by examining consumer interest in Major League Baseball players on the Twitter platform, especially considering the emergence of social media at the forefront of consumer behavior research. Specifically, the analysis uses six regression models that take into account an array of factors, including player characteristics, performance, market size, and so forth. Results reveal that when controlling for all other factors, Hispanic players receive significantly less consumer interest on social media than their counterparts, while Asian pitchers receive more. These findings yield critical insights into tendencies of sport consumer biases on digital platforms, assisting the development of an equal and efficient sport marketplace for stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Elite athlete's heart is characterized by a greater left ventricular mass indexed by body surface area (LVMI) and diastolic function; however previous studies are mainly conducted in non-Asian athletes compared to sedentary controls.Methods: This study included 1,388 male adults, aged 18–34 years, enrolled in the same unified 6-month physical training program in Taiwan. During the midterm exams of 2020, all trainees completed a 3-km run (endurance) test, and 577 were randomly selected to attend a 2-min push-up (muscular strength) test. Elite athletes were defined as the performance of each exercise falling one standard deviation above the mean (16%). Cardiac structure and function were measured by echocardiography and compared between elite and non-elite athletes. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to determine the independent predictors of elite athlete status at each exercise modality.Results: As compared to non-elite controls, elite endurance athletes had greater LVMI (84.4 ± 13.6 vs. 80.5 ± 12.9 g/m2, p < 0.001) and lateral mitral E'/A' ratio (2.37 ± 0.73 vs. 2.22 ± 0.76, p < 0.01) with lower late diastolic A' (7.77 ± 2.16 vs. 8.30 ± 3.69 cm/s, p = 0.03). Elite strength athletes had greater LVMI (81.8 ± 11.4 vs. 77.5 ± 12.1, p = 0.004) and lateral mitral E'/A' ratio (2.36 ± 0.70 vs. 2.11 ± 0.71, p < 0.01) with a greater early diastolic E' (19.30 ± 4.06 vs. 18.18 ± 4.05 cm/s, p = 0.02). Greater LVMI and lower heart rate were independent predictors of elite endurance athletes [odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals: 1.03 (1.02, 1.04) and 0.96 (0.95, 0.98), respectively]. Greater LVMI, lateral mitral E'/A' ratio and right ventricular systolic pressure were independent predictors of elite strength athletes [OR: 1.03 (1.01, 1.05), 1.50 (1.06, 2.12), and 1.12 (1.05, 1.19), respectively].Conclusions: Cardiac structural and functional characteristics differ between endurance and strength elite athletes. While greater LVMI predicts elite status in both groups of Asian athletes, consistent with findings from Western elite athletes, greater diastolic function, and right ventricular systolic pressure characterize strength elite athletes, while lower heart rate at rest predicts endurance elite athletic status.

Athletes report frequent use of various dietary supplements (DSs). However, no study has examined DS use and antidoping knowledge in Korean Olympians. The objectives of this study were to obtain information about Korean Olympians' DS use during the training period for the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games and immediately before their Olympic events, to obtain DS-intake reasons and DS providers, and to obtain information on athletes' doping education, knowledge, and educators. Korean Olympians completed 2 questionnaires 1 wk before the opening and within 1 wk after the closing of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Results showed that 79% of male and 82% of female Olympians take more than 1 DS during the training period and that vitamins and Oriental supplements are the 2 top-ranked DSs. Reasons for DS use were to improve recovery ability (66%) and muscle performance (22%), and sources of obtaining DSs were parents (36%) and coaches (35%). Furthermore, 79% of Korean Olympians reported receiving regular education on antidoping regulations from Olympic-sponsored education classes (64%) and coaches (15%). In conclusion, this study was the first to examine DS use and antidoping-related information in Korean Olympians. Because some herbal products contain substances banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, athletes should be cautious in using mixed Oriental supplements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A surge of interest in football has surfaced in the past few years in Taiwan. Many fans credit it to Xavier Chen, a Belgium born French-Taiwanese footballer. Chen lives mostly in Belgium and has a distant connection with Taiwan. His Mandarin efficacy is very limited. Yet he is still being hailed as the savior of football. Despite being a member of the Belgium Under-19 national team, Chen's tie with Taiwan was unearthed by a local football fan, who later became his agent, in the computer game franchise 'Football Manager'. He was recruited and later naturalized as a Taiwanese citizen and debuted for the national team in 2011. Chen, nicknamed 'The Noble Prince of Football', has been a very unique sport celebrity in many regards. His educational background, composure, masculinity and 'noble' image are all represented in a very different way, vis-a-vis conventional, native-born Taiwanese athletes. This research adopted critical discourse analysis to examine the coverage from major Taiwanese media outlets, from his debut in 2011 until one year into his retirement, to argue that the representation of Xavier Chen as a de-territorialized, nationalistic athlete embodies Taiwan's desperate attempt for recognition and assistance from international society through the sport of football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intersecting performance studies and critical sports studies, this article analyzes the North American media coverage of South Korean figure skater and the gold medalist Yuna Kim at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. While North American newspapers and NBC (US) and CTV (Canada) broadcasts acclaim Kim's athletic achievements onstage, they also infantilize and Orientalize Kim as an exotic, fragile, and dependent Asian girl. Contrarily, the media highlights the role of her Canadian coach Brian Orser offstage as a heroic white man. It dramatizes and sympathetically identifies with him by nostalgically recalling the 'Battle of the Brians'. When Kim's Koreanness is invisible and conflated as hypervisible ethnic Other, Asian/Asian Americanness, her athletic competency is negated under the name of Orientalism that fetishizes, romanticizes, and thus, reinforces the racialized and gendered hierarchies between the heroic white man and the fragile Asian girl. Nevertheless, Asian/Asian American female athletes' increased visibility opens a liberatory space for re-visiting Asian and Asian Americanness – Pan-Asian identity – at the glocal Olympic stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study sought to compare the effects of a restricted and unrestricted sleep schedule on shooting, cognitive performance and measures of sleepiness and fatigue of Asian, adolescent high-level student athletes. Twenty-four (12 female; 14.1 ± 1.4 years) athletes performed assessments of shooting and cognitive performance (psychomotor vigilance and working memory) at the start and end of five-day restricted or unrestricted sleep (two conditions). Restricted sleep during a five-day training week resulted in no significant performance changes in cognitive or shooting performance compared with unrestricted sleep during a five-day training week, despite there being moderate-to-strong associations between increases in total sleep time and certain aspects of shooting performance. Daytime fatigue levels during the unrestricted sleep period were significantly lower than during sleep restriction. These findings highlight the relationships between nocturnal sleep extension and shooting performance amongst high-level athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the relationship between Asian and Black athletes, global multiculturalism, and sport internationalism. Ichiro Suzuki and Yao Ming represent in clear ways the figuration of the Asian male body as both cultural phenomena and transnational commodity. This article describes the marked turn from the Asian male body as an unattractive representative for marketing commodity exchanges to an imported spectacle reproducing National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball transnational capital. However, it does not simply offer a conventional study of the political economy involved in the global expansion of popular sports. Rather, it attempts to illustrate how Asian men in US sports presuppose and indeed attempt to produce Asian masculinity through inverting the bodily emasculation of Asian American men. Throughout this article, I detail the ways in which popular sports has been racialized as a “Black” space of colonial fantasy and fears, and how Asian male athletes break down the fixity of this raciological thinking. The Black male body came to dominate celebrity and hero worship, an identificatory process that Norman Mailer once coined as “the white negro” or to use a famous slogan from a popular sports drink: Everyone wants to “Be Like Mike.” This article describes the ‘fetishization” of the Black male body and how representations of Ichiro and Yao subvert the fixity of Afro-Asian racial hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the functions of modern sports is to provide people with a sense of differentiation and classification. In addition, sports are influenced and interact with the social context. On this foundation, the present study examines the social conditions under which refugees from Asia Minor founded the soccer club "Niki Volou" after settling in the city of Volos, Greece, in the early 1920s. In particular, two issues are investigated: the reason why the soccer club was created and the role it played in the refugee community. Information was obtained from primary and secondary sources, interviews from soccer players, fans and members and articles from newspapers. It is claimed that the reason for the establishment of "Niki Volou" was related to the preservation of the refugees' particular cultural identity, while under the pressure of their clash with the indigenous population, the role of the team changed becoming the ground where the participants' ethnic identity was tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's sports not only receive less media coverage than male sports but also when women athletes are covered, gender-role stereotypes are often reinforced. This study examines USA Today's coverage of the top 3 professional women golfers, Se Ri Pak (South Korea), Annika Sorenstam (Sweden), and Karrie Webb (Australia), during the 1998–2001 LPGA seasons. The intent of this study is to gain an understanding of how the media covers a top female Asian athlete compared with athletes from Europe and Australia. A multi-method approach, using both content and textual analyses, was used to assess the amount and type of coverage accorded to the athletes. A content analysis of 649 articles indicates that Pak received less coverage proportionate to her wins than Sorenstam or Webb. Further, textual analyses revealed that three themes emerged regarding both positive and negative characteristics of the golfers: caliber, personality/appearance, and achievement. More negative characteristics were used to describe Pak than either Webb or Sorenstam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative and positive content of self-talk, the relationship of self-talk to performance, and persistence following positive and negative feedback were investigated across different cultural backgrounds (European Americans n = 54, East Asians n = 26). East Asians had a significantly larger proportion of negative to positive self-talk than European Americans, d = .62. The greater proportion of negative self-talk related to poorer performance for European Americans, but better performance for East Asians, r 2 = .13. European Americans’ practice persistence increased after receiving positive versus negative feedback, d = .59. No differences occurred in persistence for East Asians, d = .06. Results suggest sport psychology consultants and coaches should consider an athlete's cultural background when employing cognitive interventions and providing feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the origin of the Asian Games. It came in the nineteenth century from the West, initially with missionaries. The Young Men's Christian Association's timely emphasis on physical fitness in the Darwinian world of the nineteenth century had an important impact on China and Japan and other Asian countries. The establishment of the Far Eastern Championship Games (FECG) provided an international stage for Asian athletes. The FECG, on one hand, provided the Chinese sports community with the international perspective to form a conception of a sporting Chinese nation. The FECG, on the other hand, provided Japan with a platform to show its political, military and sporting superiority, combined with its experience in Olympic competitions, over its Eastern neighbor. The history of the FECG will always be remembered as a history of political conflict between China and Japan.

Regular intensive exercise is associated with a plethora of electrical, structural and functional adaptations within the heart to promote a prolonged and sustained increase in cardiac output. Bradycardia, increased cardiac dimensions, enhanced ventricular filling, augmentation of stroke volume and high peak oxygen consumption are recognised features of the athlete's heart. The type and magnitude of these adaptations to physical exercise are governed by age, sex, ethnicity, sporting discipline and intensity of sport. Some athletes, particularly those of African or Afro-Caribbean (black) origin reveal changes that overlap with diseases implicated in sudden cardiac death. In such instances, erroneous interpretation has potentially serious consequences ranging from unfair disqualification to false reassurance. This article focuses on ethnic variation in the physiological cardiac adaption to exercise., Competing Interests: Disclosure: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (Copyright © 2020, Radcliffe Cardiology.)