See varsitv.co.uk to view this week's athletes take on the challenge

The Events

Five events put our athletes through their paces, testing vital sporting attributes like Strength, Speed, Stamina and Flexibility. We record the results for each athlete then send them off to the Mathmos in the Varsity office who cleverly work out an overall SuperSports score for each competitor. The five events are: Standing Jump, Limbo, Bag Throw, 100m sprint, and the Bleep Test. The standing Jump tests dynamic lower body strength, the athlete jumping as far as they can from a stationary position. The Bag Throw tests upper body strength, the athletes tasked with hurling a large cylindrical tackle pad as far as they can - awkward as well as heavy. 100m sprint is designed to discover speed, while the Bleep Test is all about endurance. Finally, Limbo tests flexibility – and is generally just quite amusing to watch.

Week 1: Football

This is Week 1, Sport 1, of Varsity Sport’s newest competition. Each week we’re taking a male and a female competitor representing a major Blues sport and putting them to the test. Five events assess specific sporting attributes: speed, strength, stamina, and flexibility will all be measured.

The first sport to accept Varsity’s term long SuperSport challenge was Football. Max Wolke was a regular for the second team in his first year, making his way into the first team set-up this year after a series of impressive performances, culminating in a place on the Blues’ Christmas tour to La Manga. Cat Murphy, who also plays Badminton for Cambridge, has been a regular in the Women’s Blues team, playing in the last two Varsity matches.

A slippery surface affected the performances of both competitors, especially in the Bleep Test, the wet running track at Wilberforce Road’s Athletic track making sharp turns a difficult prospect (To see Max Wolke’s acrobatic tumble look at the video online). Murphy suffered in particular, falling awkwardly during the Bleep Test, recovering in time to make the next bleep, but unable to last any longer than level 10, something which she put down to an over-indulgent Christmas break. Wolke fared slightly better, eventually tiring out on level 12 bleep 9, a result he was confident he could better in drier conditions.

Both competitors did well in the 100m sprint, in spite of the weather Wolke managed to run 13.19 seconds while Murphy posted a respectable 15.41 seconds.

In this intriguing term-long battle of the Sports, Football has been represented well, but will the scores of Wolke and Murphy be enough to secure Football the Varsity SuperSports title?

Find out this term in Varsity SuperSports, next week: Rugby.