You must measure up on road to success

SPORT tends to be about the big picture. You know that. But often the reward comes from the little details that stick with you forever, that you can’t get out of your head. That was something we remembered this week with the results of a scientific study about female sports success.

According to a report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, women with ring fingers longer than their index fingers are generally better at sport; when researchers asked women to rank their achievements in 12 sports since the age of 11, those with ring fingers longer than their index fingers were better at running and related sports such as football.

If, like this column, you are obsessed with such tiny details then you will a) be looking closely at the ring and index fingers of each female sportsperson and b) getting yourself in all sorts of trouble with the single sportswomen whose fingers you are looking at. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young woman in possession of sporting talent and an unadorned ring finger will always know when that finger is being appraised. For anything.