Hi

As the blog celebrated its 2nd b-day, it’s time to update the “About Me” section once again.

I’m Michael, a 29 years old (although I don’t feel a day over 23!) PhD student in the field of cognitive psychology at Tel Aviv University.

My research is focused on some decision making stuff. Some numbers are involved in it too, and I think the intuitive system is also mentioned somewhere.

However, my biggest passion was always sports. I’m a big sports fan. Football (yes, definitely football, not soccer!), Basketball (NBA mostly), Track & Field, Swimming, Gymnastics. Up until lately I was also really into MMA. But somehow my interest in it waned. I really like to see competitions, and this is why the Olympics have a very special place in my heart, because there you can follow many competitions that you don’t encounter usually. Like Weightlifting. Or Judo. About 13 years ago I was suddenly really into Ski Jumping for a few years (Sven Hannawald rules!). I don’t follow it anymore, but I can still enjoy it if I come across it. Winter Olympics are also a great source of enjoyment – I was born and raised in Russia until the age of 6, and my father was a real Winter Sport enthusiast. I guess I caught the bug from him.

In fact, dad had a major influence on me, since it was through his awesome example that I started seriously following and watching the track & field competitions, back in the Athens World Championships in 1997 (Isn’t Moses Kiptanui one of THE best names ever for an athlete?). I developed a real addiction to T&F since then, which I’m really greatful for, since it’s like the most awesome sport there is. Dad is still my #1 choice for a fellow spectator of the track & field events, and we always watch together the Diamond League events or the World Championships. Friends are for more the mainstream sports – football, NBA, dressage, etc.

I follow sports and enjoy watching the matches and the competitions (for example – when I was in the army I managed to schedule my vacations so they will fit the Helsinki and Osaka Athletics World Championships), but perhaps even more than that I enjoy sports-related statistics.

This is a fascination that started very early – I was always attracted to numbers, tables, and graphs. If I see a table or a graph in a newspaper, my gaze is automatically attracted to it, like I always tell the undergrads I teach statistics to at Tel Aviv University.

Sports and statistics go a long way, and sports stats have always intrigued me to the extent that even as a teenager I was always compiling these lists and tables of various sports-related stats. And it always made my eyes bleed when I came across some incorrect data in a newspaper or a website. It still bugs me, even today, and when I come across some really hard-to-look-at wrong stat I have a real desire to gouge my eyes out. This is one of the reasons I started this blog – to provide truly correct data for sports fans and offer stuff that I didn’t manage to find in other places to make it available for anyone who looks for it the way I did. If by any chance you happen to see a mistake somewhere in my posts – I will be really really happy if you point it out. Just like Ryan Lochte taught us in Rio 2016, there’s nothing more important than getting your facts right.

Now, I shared some of my passion for sports stats on facebook in recent years, via some posts and notes that I wrote, but after some time I decided that this is not really a great platform for those kind of things. So this was another reason why I started this blog. I always wanted to to something of this sort, to share some of the things that I thought are really cool and interesting with other sports’ and sports’ stats freaks or just enthusiasts. I reckon that if I had the opportunity to make a living out of it – I would jump right on it.

So yeah, in this blog you will see posts that deal with sports-related stats, but also with various competitions, and even general posts. During important competitions such as the World Championships I may write (and already wrote some) daily posts that summarize the action. This is really fun for me to write, and perhaps you would find it enjoyable too.

The first two years have been awesome. I hope the second one will be as well. I also added a “Contact Me” section at the top bar, instead of just writing my e-mail address here. So if you’re looking for it – it’s no longer here, homies.

Cheers!

Michael