The earliest cars made just for racing were built low to the ground and just wide enough for a single passenger, the driver. In the early 1900s, the drivers were the same people who invented and built the first passenger cars. For example, Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, sometimes raced his cars. In 1906, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was founded by Carl Fisher. On August 19, 1909, the first car race took place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Twelve thousand were in attendance. In 1911, the first Indianapolis 500 was held there with 40 racers. Finishing in 6 hours and 42 minutes, first-place winner Ray Harroun clocked in at what seemed back in those days an unbelievably high average speed of 74.59 mph!

Over the years, as technology improved, these cars became lighter and faster. There are two kinds of open-wheel racecars, IndyCars and Formula One. IndyCars are almost exactly identical(完全相同的) to each other, so the race is a test of driving skills around a street, or race course, mostly in the U.S.; Formula One cars are customized(定做的) and raced on road courses around the world. Unlike the kind of car your family drives, neither IndyCars or F1 cars have doors, and their wheels are on the outside of the car’s body.

In 1936, Louis Meyer asked for a bottle of buttermilk after he became the first three-time Indy 500 winner, which led to the tradition of winners drinking a bottle of milk on Victory Lane(车道).

The Indy 500 has grown into one of the most anticipated(期待的) international racing events of the year, with hundreds of thousands of fans flooding into the stands each May. In 2011, it celebrated its 100^th event---and tickets sold out for the first time ever.

Female figure skaters aren’t really expected to be able to do triple axels(三周半跳). Especially not older ones---in the Olympics, that means older than 20. Mirai Nagasu did both, nailing the jump in competition at 24 during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. She was the first American woman to land a triple axel in the Olympic Games-and only the third woman to do it.

Nagasu’s been pursuing her own path since she was just 5. “My parents used to take me golfing(打高尔夫球)every day because that was the career they wanted me to have,” she wrote. “They took me ice skating one day because we couldn’t go golfing due to the rain, and after that, I kept asking to be taken to go skating.” Her ambition paid off eventually, beginning with a host of Four Continents and ISU World Junior Championship medals and ending with two World Championship and two Olympic appearances each.

Unlike other popular athletes who’ve traded childhood for training, Nagasu had to attend public school by day and help her parents in their restaurant by night. “They really taught me to work for what I want,” she said. That lesson was put to the test in 2014, when despite taking third place at the U. S. Figure Skating Championships, Nagasu was passed over for the Olympic team in favor of fourth-place finisher Ashley Wagner. Some athletes might have taken off their skates for good at that point. Instead, Nagasu got a new coach and learned the triple axel. After two years under his instruction, she displayed her new skill in the U. S. National Championships. By the time she tried it on Olympic ice in 2018, she’d perfected it. Nagasu performed the difficult three-and-a-half jump, helping her team win a bronze medal(铜牌) in the end.

The highlights of every World Cup are the impossible goals, especially the arc (弧线) ball goals. It’s breathtaking to watch. Every spin (旋转) of the ball moves air across the surface, pushing it into a bend.

When a soccer ball flies, the air forms a layer around the surface of the ball. As the balls pins, it changes the direction of the air to one side, says John Bush, an applied mathematician at MIT. This air pushes the ball in the opposite direction. The player starts with a strike on the outside of his right foot, which hits the left side of the ball, starting a clockwise spin. It throws the air off to the left, and the force created by the air leaving the ball pushes it to the right, explains Bush. Thus, a ball spinning to the right (that’s clockwise) will also are towards the right. This force is called the Magnus Effect.

It helps the goalkeepers, because they see uniform curvature (曲度) when players are taking bending shots at them. If they can pick up the spin right, it’s going to be the same amount of curvature, and they know where to put their hands. This is partly why players are much more likely to take bending shots during free kicks when goalkeepers can’t see their kicks quite as well because of the wall of defenders. If a ball isn’t spinning, it does something called knuckling, where the air turns the ball to one side in random directions, causing it to bounce in the air unpredictably. “It’s usually achieved when a player manages a sharp, fast touch of the ball, typically right on the air valve where the ball is most firm.” says Bush. Its lack of spin kept the goalkeeper from being able to predict where it was going until it was too late. All the goalkeepers tremble before the kicker that can shoot this kind of soccer ball.