'Dystopian future with no babies: World's first sperm race winner gets $10,000 cash prize

Economic Times

28-04-2025

Here are key things you need to know about world's first sperm race in LA:
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Two college students in America battled it out to the finish line in a ' sperm race ' on Friday, dubbed the 'world's first-ever reproductive health competition'. The unusual sport was invented by 17-year-old high schooler Eric Zhu, who raised over a million dollars to organise the event to call attention to male infertility.Eric Zhu's concerns about fertility align with the views of the growing pro-natalist movement, which includes figures from conservative and far-right politics. But Zhu distanced himself from the movement.'I have nothing to do with this, I'm not like an Elon Musk, who wants to repopulate the Earth," the young entrepreneur told AFP.-A pair of American students have held the 'world's first" sperm race in a new competition at one of Los Angeles ' most well-known arenas. The live contest was the brainchild of a group of tech-savvy teens.-The combatants, University of Southern California student Tristan Milker, 20, and Asher Proeger, 19, were described as 'two legends' on the official Sperm Racing website.-Eric Zhu said he was inspired by social media posts that claim average sperm counts had halved over the past 50 years. Fearing that "there could be this dystopian future where no one will be able to make babies," Zhu said he wanted to use the competition to highlight the importance of reproductive health.-The event featured samples from two healthy young university students competing on an 8-inch (20 cm) racetrack designed to mimic the female reproductive system. Milker was declared the winner after a best of three races and took home a $10,000 cash prize.-The $1.4 million spectacle took place at the LA Center Studios, which normally hosts Hollywood productions such as Dune, Top Gun: Maverick, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Mad Men, according to Daily Mail. Tickets for the event were listed as $20 for students, $40 for general admission with VIP tickets priced at $999.9-The three young co-founders of the start-up are Eric Zhu, 17, Nick Small, 16 and popular influencer Shane Fan, 22. Their goal, they claim, is to raise awareness of male infertility.-At the event, a man in a lab coat used pipettes to place semen samples — collected from the contestants beforehand — onto miniature tracks just two millimetres long.-The tracks were magnified 100 times under a microscope and filmed with a camera, which then relayed the footage to 3D animation software before the final video was broadcast to the audience.-The semen samples were freshly collected shortly before the race began to maintain their viability. Initially kept in incubation chambers at body temperature, the samples were then centrifuged to concentrate the sperm cells at the bottom.-From there, they were loaded onto a two-lane track within a microfluidic channel. A mild electric current was applied along the racetrack to guide the sperm, leveraging their natural tendency to swim upstream.-The racetrack, measuring 8 inches in length, was designed to mimic the structure of the female reproductive system. The event featured giant screens, weigh-ins, stats, leaderboards, play-by-play commentary, a half-time show as well as influencers and YouTubers in the 500-strong crowd interviewing each other.