There may be some science to support the Belle and Sebastian song that the stars of track and field are beautiful people.

Eric Postma, a research associate at the University of Zurich, had people look at portraits of elite cyclists taken the day before the start of the 2012 Tour de France. The viewers rated the riders' attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5. The portraits were scaled, cropped and lit similarly, and a person's rating of a rider was discarded if the person thought they knew the rider. After the Tour de France, Postma quantified the riders' performances on the basis of time in the prologue, the event's two individual time trials, and overall time.

Postma found that, on average, the cyclists who performed better in the Tour were rated more attractive; put another way, facial attractiveness might predict endurance performance.

Note that this result is the opposite of the phenomenon known as "speed goggles," in which people are said to find faster athletes more attractive than would be the case if the athletes were slower. In Postma's study, the people rating the riders' attractiveness had no knowledge of how the riders had performed in the Tour de France.

If facial attractiveness predicts endurance performance, Postma speculates, there may be an evolutionary explanation.

"[H]igh endurance performance is thought to have been the target of selection in early hominids, as being able to efficiently cover large distances allowed for more efficient hunting, gathering and scavenging, resulting in a number of uniquely human adaptations," Postma writes. "If true, individuals with higher endurance capacity were likely to be better resource providers for their partner and progeny. By choosing a mate with high endurance capacity, a woman would thus have gained direct (e.g. more resources for her and her offspring) and/or indirect (i.e. physically fitter offspring) benefits."

A subset of Postma's data supports this idea. Women who rated riders' attractiveness were asked if they were taking oral contraceptives. Those who were "showed a reduced preference for faster cyclists," Postma writes, a finding that's in line with other studies in which women on the pill placed less importance on standard markers of masculinity.

Heterosexual men also rated the faster cyclists more attractive. Postma says this finding suggests either that men know what women find attractive, or that the link between attractiveness and endurance performance is so strong that it might hold sway independent of sex.

If you're unfamiliar with the Belle and Sebastian song "The Stars of Track and Field," it's worth a listen.

Scott Douglas Scott is a veteran running, fitness, and health journalist who has held senior editorial positions at Runner’s World and Running Times.

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