LEO

After the normality of Cancer, abnormal service is being resumed.

 Up till now, Ancient times have been a good source of associations for signs with sports and so it continues with Leo. For ancient associations between lions and horses are rich. Hunting lions with horses goes back to the Assyrians and ancient Rome had many statues of lions and horses together.

 The great horse artist George Stubbs used these statues as a source for many of his paintings featuring horses and lions, e.g., “Horse Frightened by a Lion”. http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=21015.

 Now, if you have already read the corresponding article on Gemini, you will remember that Gemini is also associated with Equestrian sports, but there is a subtle difference between Leo’s and Gemini’s specialities as I found out.

 Because the major significance with Gemini is with Team sports, I tried only using the individual Equestrian competitions for Leo. The chart below shows the result.

All individual Equestrian Competitions

 Leo is significant at about 1 in 1,000 probability. There is no doubt about it. Both Leo and Gemini are highly significantly better than expected at Equestrian sports but Geminis are the team players and Leos are the individualists. They are related but different.

 When this idea of Related but Different came to me, it started me thinking if Gemini and Leo could be related but different in other competitions. The obvious place to start was the group of female team competitions that Gemini scores highly on.

 In the Gemini section, I restricted them to the top four competitions from Gemini’s point of view but this time I am showing all of the competitions in the standard chart format.

 All Women Medallists in Basketball, Curling, Handball, Hockey, Ice Hockey, Football, Softball, Volleyball &Water Polo Competitions

  Again, there seems to be a link between Gemini and Leo but this time it is an inverse link. Gemini are significantly better at this group of competitions, but Leo are very highly significantly worse than expected, with a probability of 1 in 2,000.

This poor representation of Leos actually causes female Leos to get significantly fewer medals than any other sign. When these sports are filtered out, the significance is no longer there.

 Could this same inverse relationship hold for Weightlifting? Here is the chart which shows it does.

All Men’s Weightlifting Competitions

Male Gemini Weightlifting medallists get significantly more medals than expected by chance while their Leo counterparts get significantly less.

What about the other way round? Is there any competition where Leo athletes are best and Gemini athletes are poorest? Yes, there is one competition, the 50km walk.

All 50km Walk Competitions

Lions, unlike lionesses, never need to hunt and so they walk rather than run. And Leos do well in all Olympic walk competitions.

There is also only one male lion per pride of lions. Walking competitions are only at the individual level as opposed to sports involving running which have individual and team races.

Also, Olympic walks are only for Men. Taking all these factors into account, the fact that Leos are indeed the Walk Kings should come as no surprise.

Curiosity Corner

1. Male lions and horses are the only animals that have a distinct mane.

2. Male lions have been known to mate up to 30 times with a lioness in heat. No prizes for guessing who would win a sex Olympics
3. Leo athletes born in the United States or Canada in 1933, 1934 or 1935 were awarded proportionately far more medals than their counterparts in other Zodiac signs. They gained 22 medals instead of the 8 expected by chance. The probability of this happening is greater than 2,000,000 to 1.