Red team advantage, or not?

At first this seems simple: if you want to be victorious, wear red.

Of 441 bouts, reds won 242 and in all four sports reds triumphed in more contests. And the red advantage was higher in close encounters: 62 per cent of red-garbed competitors won these. But in pushover contests there were similar numbers of red and blue winners. "If you're rubbish, a red shirt won't stop you from losing," Barton says.

However, it's not clear to me that they were able to rule out alternative hypotheses, such as blue relaxing an opponent and helping them win, or a combination of the two posited effects. Merely cutting out red won't eliminate the bias if other colors have an effect.