Eric Zhu, 17, wants to change the ‘sperm paradigm’.
And Eric, behind the analytical platform Aviato, knows exactly how to do it: have two guys race their sperm in front of hundreds of people.
Yes, really. Tonight, Tristan Milker, 20, of the University of Southern California (USC), and Asher Proeger, a 19-year-old of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), will compete in the world’s first-ever sperm race.
The microscopic race, which will be livestreamed, is being held at LA Center Studios, a 20-acre campus known for hosting conventions and festivals.
‘It’s so, so stupid,’ Eric tells Metro ahead of the race, ‘but it just might work.’
What time is the sperm race?
Tickets sold out in less than 48 hours, Eric says, tallying about 4,000 people, only for organisers had to switch venues, refund the tickets, and resell them again.
The demand, however, only increased after the venue switch. Now, at the time of writing, 913 people were on the waiting list. When it comes to venues, at least, size certainly matters.
(There is a VIP ticket, but we’re guessing it doesn’t let you see the drivers getting ready for the race.)
Doors open today at 6pm local time (tomorrow 2am in the UK). But before the men get their engines running, an ‘undercard’ race between influencers Noah Boat and Jimmy Zhang will happen at 8.15pm.
A half-time show will follow, with Ty Dolla $ign singing and vunnie ‘Westside V’ thou on the decks.
‘If you’re ever wondering what’s going on in LA, this is what’s going on,’ the DJ wrote on Threads.
But that’s not the climax. The start pistol will be shot at 10.05pm for Tristan and Asher’s race after a weigh-in and press conference.
Viewers can even bet on which guy is going to come on top, with the odds being 50/50 between them at the time of writing on bookies Polymarket.
In the test runs, Eric cautions, it’s always been ‘neck and neck’ between the guys. ‘I don’t know who’s gonna win,’ he says.
How… exactly are sperm racing?
For once, finishing sooner rather than later is the way to go. Two spermatozoa, just 0.05mm long, will race along a 20cm track.
But don’t expect a Scalextric set. Instead, these micro-motorists will swim through a 5000-microns-long drag course modelled after the female reproductive system.
It will be set up on a microfluidic channel on a microscope slide that will be projected for the audience to watch and cheer the racers on.
To get these lil guys to swim, the track will be fitted with ‘chemical signals, fluid dynamics, synchronised starts,’ Eric says in his Sperm Racing manifesto.
‘High-resolution cameras track every microscopic move. It’s all live-streamed, complete with stats, leaderboards, and instant replays,’ he adds.
‘The winner? The sperm that crosses the finish line first, verified by advanced imaging. The stakes have never been smaller – or bigger.’
Sperm, with chubby, tear-drop shaped heads and sleek tails, can glide, slither, spin and dash despite being the tiniest cells in the human body.
They’re also among the fastest. Sperm can whizz at 28mph – but these cellular commas only have one thing on their minds, getting to an egg.
Eggs cells let out a chemical that attracts sperm to them, which sperm sniff out to know where to go in a process called chemotaxis.
‘It’s a lot harder than you think to race sperm,’ Eric jokes.
Are you joking?
No, Eric isn’t. The idea to create the F1 of spermatic fluid came up while the investor was chatting with health-focused friends about sperm.
‘And not in a degenerate way,’ he says, ‘they were like, “what’s your sperm health?” I had never heard sperm talked about in a health-oriented way before.
‘Then I think to myself, wouldn’t it be kinda sick to race sperm? It’s an accurate biomarker; the healthier you are, the faster your sperm is.’
Almost casually, Eric recounts how three months ago, a billionaire flew him out to New York and asked: ‘What’s the craziest idea that you have that’s not your current company?’
‘Sperm racing,’ he replies.
It didn’t take long for him and three friends – Nick Small, head of business management consulting firm Stealth, Shane Fan, CEO of NFT pricing platform Waterfall, and Garret Niconienko, a former content strategist for YouTuber MrBeast – to found Sperm Racing, a start-up.
Showing spunk, the four went around pitching their idea to a few investors. ‘I thought there’d be no way people would put money in this. No way that people put, $100,000 – the maximum,’ Eric says.
The $1.5million business venture saw a million raised from independent venture capital investors, crypto investors and gambling companies/
‘Someone wired us $360,000 without signing any contracts whatsoever. It was kind of easy and then, in less than a week, we had the money,’ Eric adds.
So, this is really happening. But why?
Good question, and it’s one that Eric wants people to ask.
Average sperm counts worldwide have declined by half over the past 50 years.
The sperm count of men in Western countries has been steeply declining with no signs of ‘levelling off’ since 1973, a study found in 2017.
The team looked at the semen samples of nearly 43,000 men across 50 countries from 1973 to 2011. They found that the men’s sperm concentration – the number of sperm per millilitre of semen – had declined 52.4% in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
While total sperm count fell 59.3% over the nearly 40-year period.
Sperm count is not the be-all, end-all of male fertility and overall health, health experts stress, though exactly why rates have dropped is unclear. Some suggest that sperm levels naturally rise and fall over time and within populations, while the researchers say stress, obesity and age are factors.
‘If you look at cigarettes, 50 years ago, no one was talking about [the negative health effects],’ Eric says.
‘When people started talking about it, people were getting healthier when they got rid of cigarettes. And I think the same with sperm.’
‘In the last 50 years, not enough people have been talking about it.’
Eric says the project inspired him to get his semen count tested, and he hopes more people do the same.
‘We’re trying to bring this to the mainstream,’ Eric adds, ‘before it’s too late.’
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