Yahoo Autos How 2024 Paris Olympic Games Athlete Stats Measure Up in Car Language
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Olympic Games and cars—it's a strange connection to make. But we're strange. How fast are the Olympic cyclists? Could they outrun a 1948 Citroën 2CV? At 31 mph for the bikes and an under-pressure 41 mph for the car, it might be close. How many horses take part in The Games? What's their total horsepower? Car and Driver reached out to International Olympic Committee to find out, but we haven't heard back. Rough estimate, more than 60, which again beats the Citroën (whose name "deux chevaux" means "two horses," although even at its start it made at closer to 9 hp). While we're talking horses, did you know the airplane used to transport the Olympic equestrians is called "Air Horse One"? Important facts. Here are some more.
Mondo Miatas
Imagine sprinting roughly 150 feet (18 to 20 steps) with a nearly 18-foot-long pole which you plant in the ground and use to swing yourself up and over a pole suspended 18 to 20 feet above the ground. That's what Armand "Mondo" Duplantis does for a living. On Monday, August 5, the 24-year-old Duplantis (competing for Sweden) broke his own world record in the pole vault for the ninth time, jumping 6.25 meters or 246.063 inches (more than 20 feet). The ND Mazda MX-5 Miata measures 49.0 inches tall, meaning Mondo could feasibly jump over five Miatas stacked on top of one another.
Applied Physics
Gymnastics is a lot like driving a car. They both require the use of a lot of practical physics.
In the Olympic gymnastics floor competition on Monday, August 5, American gymnast Simone Biles flipped her way into yet another Olympic medal. From the moment she leaps into the air, gravity pushes down on her, slowing her velocity at a constant speed until she reaches the peak of her jump. From that point, she accelerates down at a constant speed until she reaches the ground.
According to a 2019 article by Wired, Biles rotates about 1.9 times per second, which comes out to 114 rotations per minute. That makes Biles's RPM quicker than the world's largest and most powerful diesel engine, which according to Amusing Planet.com has an engine speed between 22 and 102 rpm. She probably doesn't make quite as much torque, though.
Corvette ZR1 Sump Pump
When our deputy editor Carlos Lago interviewed Corvette engineer Tadge Juechter, one of the facts that caught our attention (apart from the 1064-hp figure) was the claim that the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1's turbo fans spin fast enough to consume an Olympic swimming pool's volume of air in four minutes. American swimmer Katie Ledecky can swim a freestyle lap in about 30 seconds, so she'd make it back and forth almost eight times before the pool went dry (ok, the last few might be more like wading than swimming)
World Aquatics, the international governing body that regulates water sports for the International Olympic Committee, requires competition pools to measure 164 feet 0.5 inch (50 meters) in length, and 82 feet in width. The depth of the pool can vary, though they typically range from about six and a half feet (two meters) to closer to 10 feet (three meters), resulting in a total volume of around 88,000 cubic feet. Emptying a pool through a combustion engine would be hard on both competitors and engine internals so we don't recommend it, but it's still a cool fact.
Racing the Clock
How quickly do you think you could travel 20 miles (32.4 kilometers) through the streets of Paris in a car? What about on a bike? In last week's Men's Individual Time Trial Belgium's Remco Evenepoel completed the out-and-back course in 36:12.16 at an average speed of 33.4 miles per hour. While the course was relatively flat and required less than 500 feet of climbing, there were plenty of 90-degree turns and switchbacks to bring average speeds down. Watching the Olympic Time Trial is a lot like watching stage rally racing. Riders take off at 90-second intervals and use every inch of the road to compete against the clock. Drafting is prohibited and at the end of the day, the rider who completes the course in the shortest amount of time stands on the top step of the podium. Having driven in Paris, we don't think we could beat that time even in the quickest hypercar, at least not during rush hour.
Pumping Iron
Turns out Olympic weightlifters are strong. Like really strong. Georgian lifter Lasha Talakhadze is the current Olympic record holder in the Men's +109kg category with a combined weight of 488 kilograms (1075.86 pounds). His clean and jerk weight—which involves the athlete lifting the barbell from the ground into a squatting position and then above their head with straight arms—measured at 265 kilograms (584.225 pounds) in the Tokyo Olympics. According to Ford, a 2017 Coyote crate engine tips the scales at 444 pounds, which means the top Olympic weightlifters can lift a Ford 5.0-liter Coyote crate engine above their heads like Rafiki presenting Simba. Combine his clean and jerk score with his snatch score, and Talakhadze is two-thirds of the way to single-handedly lifting a 1680 pound Honda Beat. And he has yet to compete at Paris, with his event taking place on Saturday, August 10.
We can't wait to compare events at the winter Olympic Games to cars, and in the meantime, if you want to know who our gold medalists are, check out our 10Best lists and stay tuned for Lightning Lap.
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