An athletics track is one of the more interesting geometrical forms in the world of sport. Simple, elegant, sometimes made of space-age synthetic polymers, other times a proud scar of cracked dirt in an otherwise empty grass lot. Four hundred metres or a quarter mile around, depending on one's cultural history, but either way bearing infinite spatial folds and potentials within this bounded parameter.

The track is a hybrid form, not quite certain if it wants to be a circle or a rectangle, and thus incorporates elements of both: the perfect rhythm and always-becoming of the circular form; the endless reproducibility and technicality of the linear.

But the secret is that this hybrid plays favourites. The curved bits of the track serve primarily to maintain the speed manufactured during the linear portions, which would otherwise be lost if one had to turn on a right angle at the end of a straightaway. Speed seems to play a significant role in the emergence of our architectural forms.

This holds true whether we are discussing the material architectures of the track, stadium, and cityscape, or the informational architectures that comprise our media channels and institutions. As bodies navigate the hurried society we've constructed, their speed demands architectural forms that can keep pace, much like the designated rabbit in a staged assault on a running world record.

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(excerpt from "the unexamined sporting life," the first in a new sportsbabel column at the mark magazine)

"An act of virtuosity has as its wellspring the attempt to be virtuous, which transcends any attempts at mere functional or technical competence. It is in this attempt to be virtuous as athletic-subjects that a sporting micropolitics is contested." — Pierre de Coubertin feat. Paolo Virno (sb rmx)