First past the post

PERHAPS it's because the Olympic torch is about to start wending its way across Britain (albeit for most of the way in the back of a truck), but there seems to have been an increasing interest in teaching the business aspects of sport recently. EMLYON business school in France, for example, begins its new MSc in Sports and Outdoor Industry Management this autumn, and across Britain and America, schools such as Liverpool, Coventry, George Washington in D.C. and Drexel in Philadelphia are all offering sports-oriented Masters or MBA programmes.

... With both an NFL prospect and an Olympic gold medal skier in his classroom, it's no surprise that Karl Moore, a professor at McGill University in Canada, should also find parallels between sporting and business achievement. One of the most surprising is the concentration on fitness that athletes and top managers seem to share. "I've interviewed over 200 CEOs in my time," he says, "and what's struck me is just how much time they spend working out to maintain their physical fitness at the high level they see as necessary to cope with the stresses of such a demanding job."

Read full article: The Economist, April 13, 2012