Americans have adopted the ‘tush push’ — and it could win them Olympic gold
Team USA is poised to win a Winter Olympics speed skating team pursuit medal by pushing each other's tush. The post Americans have adopted the ‘tush push’ — and it could win them Olympic gold appeared first on Outsports.
Mark
Pushing your teammate’s tush, instead of trying to pull him forward, is the recipe for speed skating success.
The Philadelphia Eagles seem to have perfected this idea in the NFL with the “tush push,” and that’s what US Speedskating has discovered in recent years.
Now American speed skaters are adapting the “tush push” technique, trying to figure out how to not just consistently win medals on the world stage, but win Olympic gold.
At the 2022 Winter Olympics, Team USA won bronze in the men’s team pursuit with Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman and Joey Mantia, after being well of the podium in 2018. The women won bronze in 2018 with Brittany Bowe, who is still competing this year in Milan.
An occasional bronze medal hasn’t been good enough for the Americans.
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So they approached aerodynamicist Ingmar Jungnickel to figure out how Team USA could incorporate his expertise into techniques that would improve their chances of winning a medal at the Winter Olympics and World Championships.
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Conor McDermott-Mostowy has skated for Team USA for several years. He recently won a team sprint World Cup gold.
“And we could show that pushing is substantially faster,” Jungnickel told NPR. “And in fact, so fast that you can go from eighth in the world to first in the world using this technique.”
Pushing their speed skating teammate’s tush is working
So why does it work?
For years, team events like this trade leaders to share the load of the drag of speed. Speed skaters skate close behind one another to reduce the resistance each athlete faces over the course of a race. When crouched behind one another, skaters behind the leader face less air resistance than the person in front of the trio.
Skaters trade leadership throughout the race, thus sharing the load of the main resistance.
This technique has one skater in the lead the entire time while the other two push the tush of the teammate in front of them. That leaves the person in the front to face the main air resistance, but it shares the load of that resistance with the entire team.
To put it succinctly: The pushing technique is more efficient over the course of a race than the drafting technique.
Can the “tush push” technique finally put the Americans on top of the podium with a gold medal here in Milan? The men finished with gold in the World Cup final standings, blowing away the competition include the formidable teams from Netherlands. The women World Cup final bronze.
They advanced to the semifinal in the team pursuit with the second-best time. Members of the team, which can rotate from round to round, are: Ethan Cepuran, Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman, Jordan Stolz and out gay speed skater Conor McDermott-Mostowy.
Last week, Stolz won Olympic gold and McDermott-Mostowy got a top-10 finish in his Olympic debut.
The women have also advanced to the team pursuit semifinals with Giorgia Birkeland, Mia Manganello, Greta Myers, Sarah Warren and out gay athlete Brittany Bowe.
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The post Americans have adopted the ‘tush push’ — and it could win them Olympic gold appeared first on Outsports.
