Sperm racing is all the rage among the tech bros. Why am I not surprised? | Arwa Mahdawi

It started as a gag, but Eric Zhu's sperm races are doing good work in putting male fertility under the microscope - literally

Remember when Elon Musk challenged Vladimir Putin to physical combat and Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight? Neither of those brawls took place for various reasons. Not least, I suspect, because Musk is just self-aware enough to know that he would not emerge with his dignity, or his spine, intact. However, if the richest man in the world is still casting around for a way to publicly demonstrate his virility, I think I've hit on the perfect way: sperm racing.

This isn't some below-the-belt insult. Sperm racing is an emerging thing" among tech types now. A teenage entrepreneur called Eric Zhu came up with the idea, and went viral with his first sperm race in April. That initial race was rudimentary: college students gave sperm samples to be analysed and the results were turned into an animated race that visualised the fastest offerings.