Los Angeles:
A commentator yells excitedly as tons of of spectators stand glued to a video of a racecourse — however the athletes they’re rooting for are literally tiny sperm cells.

The bizarre sport was invented by 17-year-old excessive schooler Eric Zhu, who raised over one million {dollars} to organise the occasion to name consideration to male infertility.

Zhu mentioned he was impressed by social media posts that declare common sperm counts had halved over the previous 50 years.

Fearing that “there could possibly be this dystopian future the place nobody will be capable of make infants,” Zhu mentioned he needed to make use of the competitors to spotlight the significance of reproductive well being.

Scientists haven’t reached a consensus on whether or not humanity has skilled a dramatic drop in sperm depend, with research exhibiting conflicting outcomes.

On the Los Angeles occasion on Friday night time, a person in a lab coat used pipettes to position samples of semen — collected from contestants forward of time — onto tiny two-millimetre lengthy “tracks.”

The race observe was magnified 100 instances by a microscope, then filmed by a digicam that transferred the picture to a 3D animation software program earlier than the ultimate video was broadcast to the viewers.

“There is not any approach to actually inform if that is actual, however I wish to consider it’s,” Felix Escobar, a 20-year-old spectator, instructed AFP.

On the finish of the transient race, the loser, 19-year-old College of California pupil Asher Proeger, was sprayed with a liquid resembling semen.

‘Not Elon Musk’

Zhu’s fears about fertility echo the speaking factors of many within the burgeoning pro-natalist motion, which embody conservative and far-right political figures.

However Zhu distanced himself from the motion.

“I’ve nothing to do with this, I am not like an Elon Musk, who desires to repopulate the Earth,” the younger entrepreneur instructed AFP.

Musk, a detailed ally of US President Donald Trump, has been vocal about his perception that inhabitants decline threatens the West and has fathered over a dozen kids with a number of girls.

Zhu insisted he merely needed to lift consciousness of how sperm high quality goes hand in hand with total well being.

“It is your option to sleep earlier. It is your option to cease doing medication. It is your option to eat more healthy, and all these various things have a major form of impression in your motility,” Zhu mentioned.

Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at Mount Sinai’s Icahn College of Medication, co-authored a examine that discovered the sperm depend decline cited by Zhu.

She mentioned the proliferation of “hormonally lively chemical substances” lately has had a unfavorable impression on human fertility.

However beneath the scientific veneer, the sperm race could seem extra like a possibility for faculty college students to show their adolescent humor and take part in a viral stunt.

Some attendees wearing costumes, together with one resembling male genitals, whereas the hosts made lewd jokes and roasted the rivals.

A YouTube livestream of the occasion attracted over 100,000 views.

“I am unable to say I discovered stuff I did not know earlier than,” 22-year-old pupil and viewers member Alberto Avila-Baca instructed AFP.

(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)