Condi Rice knows – winners wear red
Posted: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 1:13 PM
By Libby Leist, NBC News Producer
Thanks to Mom, powerful people wear red.
Tiger Woods has said he wears red when he competes on Sundays, usually the final day of golf tournaments, because his mother told him it symbolizes power.
And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently that thanks to her mother’s advice, she wears red when she wants "to feel really on top of things."
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| AFP/Getty Images file |
| U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Oct. 16. |
In an interview conducted with Girl Scout magazine in September and just released by the State Department today, Rice told a group of Girl Scouts that her favorite color is navy blue, but on some days she feels the urge to wear red.
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| Getty Images file |
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Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, speaks during a campaign rally on Sept. 29 in Ohio. |
"I love navy blue," Rice said. "But when I want to feel really on top of things I wear red I wear red because my mother told me once ...when I was younger, I liked to wear pretty muted colors. And my mother said, ‘When you get to be 35, all of a sudden you're going to want to wear red.’ I had no idea what she meant, but she was right. So when I want to feel really on top of things, I wear red."
In fact, Woods and Rice seem to have gotten good advice from mom. A study done by British scientists in 2005 concluded that athletes who wore red were more likely to succeed than those wearing other colors.
Based on studying the outcomes of four sports in the 2004 Olympics, the scientists determined that wearing red was more than just a lucky hunch.
"We find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning," the researchers wrote in an article in the journal Nature.
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| AFP/Getty Images |
| Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy McCain attend a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Oct. 21. |
And while red is the symbolic color of the GOP, did Rice pass her mother’s advice onto Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain? The vice presidential candidate and McCain’s wife have been frequently sighted on the campaign trail wearing red.
