高海拔的足球队有更大的主场优势
高海拔的足球队有更大的主场优势
It is well known that sporting teams win more often playing at home than away, but the question of why has inspired much research. At least for European football, a new study reveals several factors that provide a benefit, but the most important is altitude. So Swiss teams really have no excuse.
众所周知，运动队在主场比客场更容易获胜，但“为什么会这样”的问题激发了很多研究。至少对欧洲足球来说，一项新的研究揭示了几个有利因素，但最重要的是海拔。所以瑞士队真的没有借口。
In some sports, it is easy to see why playing at home would offer benefits. Soil and climate affect the bounce of a cricket pitch, so it's hardly surprising people who have spent their lives adapting to particular conditions do better there. It's not so obvious why basketball players, for example, with identical court dimensions would find games on the road more challenging.
在一些运动中，很容易看出为什么在主场会有好处。土壤和气候会影响板球场地的弹跳，所以那些一生都在适应特定环境的人在那里表现得更好也就不足为奇了。举例来说，篮球运动员在球场尺寸相同的情况下，为什么会觉得客场比赛更具挑战性，原因就不那么明显了。
Stephen Luntz
Nevertheless, the stats clearly reveal home-ground, or court, advantage remains. To explain why, Dr Nils Van Damme and Professor Stijn Baert of Ghent University analyzed 2012 games from the UEFA Champions and Europa Leagues. With 47 percent won by the home team, 29 percent away, and 24 percent draws there's no doubt it's better to be on familiar turf, but the authors wanted to know what conditions enhanced or diminished the size of the phenomenon.
尽管如此，这些数据清楚地显示出，主场或球场优势依然存在。为了解释其中的原因，根特大学的尼尔斯·范·达米博士和斯汀·贝尔特教授分析了2012年的欧洲冠军联赛和欧罗巴联赛。主场47%胜，客场29%平，24%平，毫无疑问，在熟悉的地盘上更好，但作者想知道是什么条件增强或减弱了这种现象。
Fans will be pleased to know their cheering makes a difference; as many previous studies have shown, large partisan crowds make wins more likely. However, the biggest benefit came from being based in a high-altitude city and playing opponents from sea level.
球迷将会很高兴，因为他们的欢呼也是影响因素之一，许多先前的研究显示,粉丝多的球队获胜的可能性更大。然而,最大的好处来自位于高海拔的城市，与来自海平面的对手比赛。
The benefit only goes one way, however; flatland teams don't get a head start when visited from the mountains.
然而，好处只有一个;平地上的队伍在从山上来的时候没有一个好的开始。
It takes 5,000 screaming fans to equal the benefit from being the height of a 30-story building further into the sky than the competitors.
需要5000名尖叫的粉丝才能获得比竞争对手更高的30层楼的高度。
Other factors the pair investigated, such as how far (horizontally) the away team had to travel, produced no statistically significant effect, although it is possible a larger sample size would have changed this. The authors also considered factors such as climatic and cultural differences between the venue and the away team's origins, but the only one that seemed to matter was being richer than the visitors.
这两人调查的其他因素，如客场队必须走多远(水平方向)，没有产生统计上显著的影响，尽管更大的样本量可能会改变这一点。作者还考虑了气候和客队起源之间的文化差异等因素，但唯一重要的似乎是比客队更富有。
Although reduced oxygen at high altitude is well known to affect new arrivals' performance, multifactorial analysis like this is susceptible to decisions about what gets left out. Perhaps academics from the coastal plane of one of the world's lowest-lying countries were subtly influenced by a desire to emphasize sea-level dwellers' disadvantages. Only replication will tell.
虽然众所周知，高空缺氧会影响新到者的表现，但像这样的多因素分析很容易让人决定遗漏什么。也许来自世界上海拔最低的国家之一的沿海地区的学者们被一种强调海平面上居民的劣势的愿望微妙地影响了。只有复制才能说明问题。
