Given that athletics races can be won or lost by a margin as small as a hundredth of a second, do athletes risk a gold medal by wearing gold chains?
• Horse racing has always understood the relationship between a jockey’s weight and the power output that a horse can sustain. This is why jockeys are weighed together with their saddle, boots and gold chains, if any, before each race. Lead weights may be added to the saddles (known as a handicap) to ensure that no horse and rider have an unfair advantage.
A human sprinter trains to maximise power output…
