Jetlag and teams' performance at BB

[marcinpu]

Looking at the results of some of the teams it seems that they had 1-2 disasterous days in a row (Sweden - first 2 days; Norway - 4-5th day; Poland - 5-6th day) and then came back to their "normal" performance.

 

As far as I know Poland, for example, arrived in Shanghai a day before BB, so the huge drop in their performance might be explained (at least partially) by the jetlag. Just wonder if some of you know how other teams planned their stay in Shanghai and how many days before they arrived.

 

M.

[skjaeran]

The Norwegian team arrived in Shanghai Saturday morning, the day before play started. I know they felt the jet lag problem, but as far as I remember that was prior to the four terrible matches in row. It might still be due to the jet lag - I don't know. Whatever caused these bad matches, those results meant they needed a strong finish in the RR to reach the KO stage.

 

After that they seemed to play at their best at times and very well most of the time. B)

[mrdct]

Perhaps due to the generally longer distances that Australians need to travel to get to international events, the Australia Bridge Federation requires players to arrive at least 48 hours before play commences.

 

With China being in a similar time-zone to Australia and only a short 10 hour direct flight from Sydney, 48 hours may have been a little bit over the top, but I would suggest that every minute of that 48 hours would be useful for players coming from further away and with a big time change.

[helene_t]

Jet-lag is a very individual thing. I know people who complain about a single hour of time difference. Personally I did not notice anything from the 11 hours time difference when I went to New Zealand. Then again I think even a tiny impact on one's fitness can make a lot of difference in such an event.

 

Jet-lag is a facinating phenomena. I used to think that it was simply a question of adjusting to a new sleep rythm, similar to what happens during the weekend/workweek transition and during the transition to/from daylight saving. But there's more to it than that. The liver has it's own 24-hour clock, while the brain (or at least parts of the brain) adjusts it's clock to daylight. During a jet-lag, the brain adjusts faster than does the liver. A former colleague of mine did experiments on rats. If you cut the nerves to the liver just before inducing the jet-lag, it will take more than a month (if I recall correctly) before the rat manages to syncronize its liver clock with its brain clock.