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Stats, Qatar and Saturday night stirring: Some of the week's best sportswriting

Why go outside when you’ve all this top, top sportswriting to catch up on.

1. “Women’s records are almost twice as old as men’s records, with an average age of 21.9 years.  Nine out of the 14 analysed records date to the 1980s, and the oldest records are for women’s 800m and 400m.

If you like world records and stats about world records, then this stats-driven piece on SportsScientists.com is for you.

2.This is a story about how actions have consequences, no matter how just or moral you think your cause happens to be, and it’s a story about the price people all too often pay for speaking out.

On Deadspin, Chris Kluwe speaks about his exit from the NFL after voicing support for same-sex marriage.

3. “Every Saturday night, legions of disgruntled football fans stab out accusations of bias or stupidity on their smartphones and fling them into the ether.

The difference here is that Hamann hadn’t offered up a lazy judgement or claimed ignorance of an internationally recognised footballer. He’d simply made an interesting point.

In the Daily Mirror, Iain Macintosh defends Didi Hamman’s right to call Yaya Toure a liability.

4. “He was no angel – as his clashes with Hill and Jacques Villeneuve demonstrate – but apart from the Fernando Alonso-Lewis Hamilton spat, when was there last a decent rivalry in the sport? Remember (briefly) wondering if Schumacher could finish the race with three wheels after his clash with David Coulthard in 1998? He was THAT good.”

Niamh O’Mahony pens this moving tribute to Michael Schumacher.

5. “By definition, any run of luck – good or bad – will eventually subside, hence the regression to the mean in PDO. Yet luck is not the only reason why a statistic might regress…”

‘Tis the season for reflection by statistical analysis, but the moral of the story on BSports.com is ‘Please Don’t over-interpret’.

6.Everything’s expensive-looking and artful enough, but there is something both robotic and almost poignant about it. It’s the same feeling you’ll get while watching a movie in which a robot appears to experience fear or doubt or some other human emotion. The cold futility of human-ish things washed over the steel and circuitry of a bloodless precision-engineered future that does not necessarily require us.

David Roth heads to Qatar to size up the 2022 World Cup hosts. A very, very long read (in five parts) on SB Nation.

VIDEO: Check out ESPN SportsCenter’s top 10 plays of 2013

Fan tries to videobomb reporter, falls amusingly on his arse