Kicking off the 2020 Olympic year with a bumper sport and exercise science edition

With 2020 being a summer Olympics year the journal is leading off with the first issue of the year packed full of sport and exercise science articles. The topics covered in the three feature articles leading us off this month represent the broad range of sport and exercise science sub-themes. In the first feature article, Hannigan and Pollard underline the complexity of the resultant movement patterns from maximal, traditional and minimal running shoe types. They suggest that factors other than midsole stack height significantly impact on ground reaction force parameters. In a study supporting the usefulness of the case study approach, Serpell’s group outline iron stores, haemoglobin mass, and performance before, during and after intermittent altitude exposure in a professional male rugby player experiencing iron overload following blood transfusions for treatment for acute myeloid leukemia. The final feature article is a nice example of applying information science in sport and performance, Sheehan, Tribolet, Watsford, Novak, Rennie and Fransen utilised a principal component analysis to reduce the number of characteristics related to a cooperative network analysis from Australian Football League games.