DAVID Beckham. Cristiano Ronaldo and Rnfacl Nadal while you watch sports and admin* the players’ skills, do you ever notice how handsome the players are?
Yes, sportsmen tend to be handsome. And they haven’t only attracted the interest of the audience even scientists are now studying their good looks.
In a recent study, Erik Postma, a biologist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, collected the headshots（頭像）of 80 professional athletes from I hr 2012 Tour He France, a bicycle race held in Franco. The race, which covers 3,200 kilometers in 23 days, is often considered to In* one of the hardest endurance（耐力）events, according to The Telegraph.
Postma then asked female participants to score the cyclists’ attractiveness.judging them only based on their facial appearances. So, if a participant recognized any of the cyclists, meaning she knew how good he was at the sport, her score wouldn’t count.
After comparing all the scores with the cyclists’ performances in the 2012 race, Postma was surprised to find that the best riders were rated on average 25 percent more attractive than the worst ones. For example, one of the cyclists, Maxime Monfort , came third in terms of attractiveness and sixth in terms of performance, reported Discovery News.
But where did women get the ability to single out a good rider by simply looking at his face?
According lo Postma, evolution (進化) seems to be the answer. In ancient times, women preferred to marry strong men because they would provide good genes for their children. A man with great endurance was also able to cover long distances to hunt for food, which would allow him to better feed the family. “That’s why endurance performance was a key evolutionary factor.” Postma told Discovery News.
As you can see, it’s not that sportsmen ate more attractive themselves, women were just born to think of them that way.
Perhaps surprisingly, when Postma did the same test with male participants, he found that men actually had a quite similar view on which riders were handsome. Even
though most men aren’t aware of it. they inherited (繼承) this ability from their ancient past, when it was necessary to “spot potential competitors” , explained Postma.
小題1:What did Erik Postma ask female participants to do in his study?
| A．To help collect the headshots of professional cyclists from the Tour de France. |
| B．To pick out the cyclists whom they are familiar with or appreciate most. |
| C．To rate the cyclists’ attractiveness according to facial appearance. |
| D．To predict the cyclists ’ performances based on facial appearance. |
小題2:What did Postma discover from his study?
| A．The more attractive a cyclist was, the better he performed in the race. |
| B．Generally, a cyclist’s endurance had nothing to do with his attractiveness. |
| C．Attractive cyclists proved to have less endurance than those who were less attractive. |
| D．Those who performed best in the games were considered more attractive than those who performed worst. |
小題3:What can we conclude from the last three paragraphs?
| A．Women and men hold quite different views on male attractiveness. |
| B．Men with good looks tend to lie less popular than men with great endurance. |
| C．A man with great endurance appealed to women in ancient times and this remains the same today. |
| D．Most men don* t have the same ability as women to single out a good sportsman by simply looking at his face. |
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