AUSTRALIA'S SPORTING SUCCESS
A They play hard, they play often, and they play to win. Australian sports teams win more than their fair share of titles, demolishing rivals with seeming ease. How do they do it? A big part of the secret is an extensive and expensive network of sporting academies underpinned by science and medicine. At the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), hundreds of youngsters and pros live and train under the eyes of coaches. Another body, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) finances programs of excellence in a total of 96 sports for thousands of sportsmen and women. Both provide intensive coaching, training facilities and nutritional advice.
B Inside the academies, science takes centre stage. The AIS employs more than 100 sports scientists and doctors, and collaborates with scores of others in universities and research centres. AIS scientists work across a number of sports, applying skills teamed in one - such as building muscle strength in golfers - to others, such as swimming and squash. They are backed up by technicians who design instruments to collect data from athletes. They all focus on one aim: winning. We can't waste our time looking at ethereal scientific questions that don't help the coach work with an athlete and improve performance,' says Peter Fricker, chief of science at AIS.
C A lot of their work comes down to measurement - everything from the exact angle of a swimmer’s pe to the second-by-second power output of a cyclist. This data is used to wring improvements out of athletes. The focus is on inpiduals, tweaking performances to squeeze an extra hundredth of a second here, an extra millimetre there. No gain is too slight to bother with. It’s the tiny, gradual improvements that add up to world-beating results. To demonstrate how the system works, Bruce Mason at AIS shows off the prototype of a 3D analysis tool for studying swimmers. A wire-frame model of a champion swimmer slices through the water, her arms moving in slow motion. Looking side-on, Mason measures the distance between strokes. From above, he analyses how her spine swivels. When fully developed, this system will enable him to build a biomechanical profile for coaches to use to help budding swimmers. Mason's contribution to sport also includes the development of the SWAN (Swimming Analysis) system now used in Australian national competitions. It collects images from digital cameras running at 50 frames a second and breaks down each part of a swimmer's performance into factors that can be analysed inpidually - stroke length, stroke frequency, average duration of each stroke, velocity, start, lap and finish times, and so on. At the end of each race, SWAN spits out data on each swimmer.
D ‘Take a look,' says Mason, pulling out a sheet of data. He points out the data on the swimmers in second and third place, which shows that the one who finished third actually swam faster. So why did he finish 35 hundredths of a second down? ‘His turn times were 44 hundredths of a second behind the other guy,' says Mason. ‘If he can improve on his turns, he can do much better’. This is the kind of accuracy that AIS scientists' research is bringing to a range of sports. With the Cooperative Research Centre for Micro Technology in Melbourne, they are developing unobtrusive sensors that will be embedded in an athlete's clothes or running shoes to monitor heart rate, sweating, heat production or any other factor that might have an impact on an athlete's ability to run. There's more to it than simply measuring performance. Fricker gives the example of athletes who may be down with coughs and colds 11 or 12 times a year. After years of experimentation, AIS and the University of Newcastle in New South Wales developed a test that measures how much of the immune-system protein immunoglobulin A is present in athletes' saliva. If IgA levels suddenly fall below a certain level, training is eased or dropped altogether. Soon, IgA levels start rising again, and the danger passes. Since the tests were introduced, AIS athletes in all sports have been remarkably successful at staying healthy.
E Using data is a complex business. Well before a championship, sports scientists and coaches start to prepare the athlete by developing a ‘competition model', based on what they expect will be the winning times. ‘You design the model to make that time,' says Mason. ‘A start of this much, each free-swimming period has to be this fast, with a certain stroke frequency and stroke length, with turns done in these times.' All the training is then geared towards making the athlete hit those targets, both overall and for each segment of the race. Techniques like these have transformed Australia into arguably the world's most successful sporting nation.
F Of course, there's nothing to stop other countries copying-and many have tried. Some years ago, the AIS unveiled coolant-lined jackets for endurance athletes. At the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, these sliced as much as two per cent off cyclists' and rowers' times. Now everyone uses them. The same has happened to the ‘altitude tent', developed by AIS to replicate the effect of altitude training at sea level. But Australia's success story is about more than easily copied technological fixes, and up to now no nation has replicated its all-encompassing system.
Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. a reference to the exchange of expertise between different sports | ||||||
| 2. an explanation of how visual imaging is employed in investigations | ||||||
| 3. a reason for narrowing the scope of research activity | ||||||
| 4. how some AIS ideas have been reproduced | ||||||
| 5. how obstacles to optimum achievement can be investigated | ||||||
| 6. an overview of the funded support of athletes | ||||||
| 7. how performance requirements are calculated before an event |
题目定位词：exchange of expertise, different sports
题目句意：不同的体育项目之间进行专业知识的交换
题解：B 段 通过题目中 different sports 可知，该题目所对应的段落中应出现表示体育运动的具体名词，可有意识寻找多项体育运动集中出现的段落。…applying skills learned in one — such as building muscle strength in golfers — to others, such as swimming and squash. ……把从一个项目上获得的技巧——比如说高尔夫球手怎样锻炼肌肉——应用到其他的项目上，比如说游泳和壁球。
题目定位词：visual imaging, investigations
题目句意：视频成像在研究中的应用
题解：C 段注意题目中的这句话是对 C 段中提到的布鲁斯 · 梅森所使用的两种研究方法的总结：三维分析工具 (3D analysis tool) 和游泳分析系统 (SWAN)。
题目定位词：narrowing, scope of activity
题目句意：研究活动的范围缩小的一个理由
题解：B 段 题目中的这句话是基于 B 段中彼得 · 弗里克说的那句话，“We can’t waste our time looking at ethereal scientific questions that…”，“我们不能浪费时间来研究那些虚无飘渺的科学问题，……”
题目定位词：AIS ideas, reproduced
题目句意：澳大利亚体育学院的一些想法怎么被别人效仿的
题解：F 段 这道题目是比较容易判断的。题目中的这句话是对最后一段的总结。只要知道 reproduced 和 coping 是对应的就能做对的。
题目定位词：obstacles, be investigated
题目句意：怎样可以研究妨碍取得最好成绩的一些因素
题解：D 段 题目这句话是对 D 段里面所举例子的总结。梅森说的那个游泳运动员转弯慢影响了成绩，还有下面的免疫球蛋白 A(IgA) 的水平对运动员的影响。
题目定位词：overview, funded support
题目句意：概括介绍了对运动员的资金支持
题解：A 段 这道题目是比较容易的。只要大家一看到“overview” 这个词，就一定要在第一段或者最后一段找，它表示“对…… 的一般概括的看法、介绍等”并且要注意题目中的“funded” 是和第一段中的“finances”对应的。
题目定位词：performance requirements, calculated, before the event
题目句意：对于比赛成绩的要求是怎样在赛前进行推算的
题解：E 段这个题目说的就是该段的“竞争模型”(competition model )。如果能够注意到题目中的“before the event”和文章 E 段的第一句话里面的“before the championship”是对应的就容易做了。