HTSI editor’s letter: how to sport it
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
On your marks? We’re feeling pretty pumped about this issue: not an Olympic edition per se, but one that looks at the rewards associated with athletic effort; the things that get our pulses racing and our adrenaline to surge.
Our cover star Enzo Lefort, the French fencing world champion hoping to take gold this summer, captures the mood. He tells Simon Kuper: “Once I’m in action… all the adrenaline in my body is directed at one goal: winning the game. Adrenaline helps me to do things faster, stronger, longer, better. It helps me be even better than I am in training. You need adrenaline to be a champion.”
We mere mortals may not be competing for such laurels, but a spike of adrenaline can be an addictive thing. Countless studies have concluded that we sleep, eat and focus better when we move our bodies, and so this issue is a paean to all the ways in which we might get our thrills.
Firstly, are you an Ōura bore? I know I am. I got my health tracker nearly 18 months ago, a gold band that sits on my ring finger, and ever since I’ve become enslaved to all the data that it offers me. Thanks to Ōura, I can now tell you how much REM sleep I got last night, how many steps I’ve taken and whether my cardiovascular age is aligned with my actual age.
Right now, as in any relationship, we’re having a few issues. I went on a walking holiday last week, and despite smashing my activity goals each day by some enormous measure, I managed to nullify my “readiness” rating by drinking holiday-sized volumes of red wine. As a result, my statistics have not been championship material. My Ōura has been nagging me to “take it easy” like some bitchy school mistress barking at me to observe “lights out” at night.
I’m not the only one now married to my Ōura: on a recent press trip I found myself among a cadre of Ōura-wearing editors who would bore on all day about the depth and quality of their sleep. What is it about this particular wearable that makes people so receptive to its data? Grace Cook meets the company’s CEO to find out what its cult appeal is all about.
This isn’t the only cult-like group Grace has examined in this issue; she’s also broken down that most macho of tribes, the marathon-running set. Marathons have become a huge social flex in recent years, with running clubs becoming the new social mixers and young people turning from drinking to doing 10k runs instead. Grace has looked at the new niches within the marathon community and compiled a brilliant field study of the tribes of 2024. (Sidenote, Grace is herself a multi-marathoner, something for which I feel at least partially responsible. Two years ago she wrote a piece about the rise in running clubs for HTSI, went for a few jogs “for research”, and then underwent a full lifestyle change. She’s since run four full marathons and five half marathons – she barely has time to write she’s so busy bounding around Berlin or Boston these days.)
Another adrenaline junkie, HTSI contributor Igor Ramírez García-Peralta, is never happier than when throwing himself in freezing rivers, or pedalling along some punishing mountain range. This week, he’s taken up aqua trekking in Oman, a relatively new sport that involves hiking into canyons, rappelling down waterfalls and diving off cliffs. He’s convinced the pursuit will become a major leisure industry: for now, however, he’s got the country’s stunning wadis to himself.
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