01 The Shoe Rules Athletics Actually Enforces: 20mm, 40mm, and a Check After You Race
World Athletics measures soles at two fixed points on one standard shoe size, and inspects shoes only after the event — never in the call room.
Rules · Origins · Power
Understand the game behind the game.
Beyond scores and hot takes: the laws, systems, turning points and institutions that shape world sport, traced to the source.
The Biological Passport Catches Doping Without Finding a DrugRead the full story ↗ Choose your angle
The whole game,
not just the score.
Four editorial desks. One job: make the machinery of sport legible.
01Origins & HistoryWhere each sport actually came from — who codified it, when, and which rules changed along the way. Dated to primary sources rather than repeated folklore.13 field notes ↗02Trophies & CompetitionsThe history of the trophies themselves and the competitions behind them — what they are made of, who made them, and how each contest has changed shape.6 field notes ↗03Rules & TechniquesThe actual laws of the major world sports in plain language — scoring, positions, officiating and the techniques that follow from them.116 field notes ↗04How Sport Is RunGoverning bodies, qualification formats and competition structure — who sets the rules, who runs the tournaments, and how teams actually get in.56 field notes ↗
Selected intelligence
Read deeper.
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02 Artistic Swimming Now Makes You Declare What You Are About to Do
Teams submit a coach card listing every element and its difficulty — and if the routine does not match the card, a base mark strips the value out.
03 Why an Athlete Betting on Their Own Sport Is Punished Harder Than Losing
Leagues do not mainly fear players throwing games. They fear the information a player has before anyone else does.
From the desk
Recently decoded.
- 01Australian Rules Football: The Mark, the Bounce, and 'Prior Opportunity'Catch a kick of fifteen metres and play stops for you. Run fifteen metres without bouncing and you lose the ball. The same number governs both.
- 02Biathlon Rules: A Miss Costs 150 Metres, Except When It Costs a MinuteStanding targets are more than twice the width of prone ones — and the penalty for missing changes format to format.
- 03BMX at the Olympics: One Discipline Is a Race, the Other Is JudgedEight riders and a gate in racing; two 60-second runs and a score out of 100 in freestyle park — and the finals count them differently.
- 04Boccia's Ramp Assistant Must Face Away From the CourtA BC3 athlete plays through a ramp and an assistant — and the assistant is forbidden to look at the game they are helping to play.
- 05Canoe Slalom Penalties: Two Seconds for a Touch, Fifty for a MissThe gap between the two penalties is enormous and deliberate — brushing a pole is survivable, missing a gate ends your run.
- 06The Bosman Ruling: The Day Football Stopped Being Exempt From Employment LawOn 15 December 1995 a European court decided footballers are workers — so an out-of-contract player could leave for nothing, and nationality quotas fell.
Why SportsGoogly
“Sport is more interesting when you understand who wrote the rules—and why.”