I was looking through CNN and found this article. Apparently winning and wearing red go hand in hand.
Researchers: To win in sports, wear red
Thursday, May 19, 2005 Posted: 12:23 PM EDT (1623 GMT)
"06/18/2005";
 Boston Red Sox's Jason Varitek and Kevin Millar, wearing red uniforms, celebrate after beating the Oakland Athletics on May 11. | |
| 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.
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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