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Sciency sporting excuses 鈥� the winner

LAST month, as the world was in a fever of anticipation over the football World Cup, Feedback had a vision of what was about to come to pass. Soon, we foresaw, all but a few teams would be roundly humiliated and sent home 鈥� and so it turned out. But what, we wondered, would they say to disappointed fans who had stumped up a fortune to watch them, only to be met with frustration and humiliation? Any excuse, we felt, would have to be absolutely first-class.

Thus was born our World Cup competition. We asked you to send us your best scientific and technological excuses for losing at sport. In the great tradition of such excuses, truth, accuracy and the ability to stand up to close scrutiny were conspicuously lacking from many of the entries. But who cares? What matters is saying something 鈥� anything 鈥� that diverts attention from the truth, which is that you screwed up.

We have picked out a winner and 10 runners-up, following a highly competitive process that saw Feedback and a number of colleagues sitting with a huge pile of paper on which we scribbled indecipherable opinions about the entries and tried to outdo one another with football trivia. Finally we reached a decision. At least it was less nerve-racking than a penalty shoot-out.

MANY of you homed in on the fact that this World Cup was held in the southern hemisphere, and blamed European teams鈥� competitive under-achievement on the Coriolis effect. It has been stated often enough that, south of the equator, bath water spins clockwise rather than anticlockwise as it goes down the plughole, from which it follows that the behaviour of footballs will be similarly affected. Of course, the whole thing has no foundation in fact, but that only impressed us more.

Runner-up Anthony Martin also picked up on the differences between the northern and southern halves of the Earth, but he took a biological tack. 鈥淓volutionary traits that have shaped our English players in the northern climate leave them susceptible to more intense UV rays near the equator,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hese UV rays penetrate the skull deeper, thus affecting the pituitary gland, which then instructs for less competitive/winning formula hormone testosterone to be produced.鈥�

Another common theme was parallel universes and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Runner-up Dan Salmons neatly summed it up: 鈥淚n another universe, I won.鈥�

On a similarly quantum note, Andrew Goeldner complained: 鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 know where the ball was and where it was going at the same time.鈥�

Some particularly ingenious special pleading came from Lawrie Malen, who claimed: 鈥淭he only reason I was unable to kick a football more than 10 yards was the highly localised geomagnetic storms around my school, which affected the steel studs in my boots and caused my feet to flail wildly. I also got horrible static shocks from my shirt.鈥� It would be difficult to prove him wrong.

Problems of a more physiological nature were reported by Felicity Harper. 鈥淚 had a rather large breakfast before a gymnastics competition,鈥� she says, 鈥渟o that my belly protruded slightly more than normal. I fell off the beam while doing a cartwheel because my centre of gravity was in an unexpected position.鈥� This makes us think that a Weeble, which wobbles but does not fall down, would be ideally suited to gymnastics.

Giulio Zicchi has evidently learned a thing or two from NASA over the years. He claims to have been 鈥渓obbed in goal by the opposition striker鈥�, despite having 鈥渋nstantly calculated the mass of the ball, the force applied, and the trajectory, and factored in the wind speed.鈥� Sadly, 鈥渢he forward had made his calculations in imperial, whilst I made mine in metric鈥�, he claims.

For Ilkka Leikkonen, it was the ball itself that was at fault: a pathetic excuse that surely no self-respecting footballer would dare utter. 鈥淭he ball did not spin at all, because it was made of some synthetic material that contained equal amounts of right and left-handed amino acids, unlike balls that are made of natural materials.鈥�

In a rare collision with the real world, Martin Ade-Hall recounted an explanation supposedly once offered by a Formula 1 racing driver for crashing into a protective column of tyres by the trackside: 鈥淭he car in front had passed the column so closely that its low-pressure wake had caused the column to sway into his path.鈥�

So it was all down to the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere. Alex Whitworth had a similar thought, but he was more succinct about it, saying simply in reference to the father of fluid dynamics theory: 鈥淏ernoulli sucks.鈥�

Lastly, we have to give serious kudos to Cyril Blount for turning a well-known perceptual phenomenon on its head: 鈥淚 was watching the gorilla,鈥� he claims.

AND finally, the winner. Mark Horton of Lechlade, Gloucestershire, UK, had the young Albert Einstein giving this excuse for failing to be awarded a crucial goal: 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 offside in my frame of reference.鈥�

鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 offside in my frame of reference鈥� 鈥� the young Albert Einstein鈥�

Well done Mark, who is now the proud owner of a World Cup football.