They were simply the fastest cells that were among those that were raced; many cells from various species of protists, not to mention sperm cells are capable of faster speeds than that.
This is a fair point - though the story points to the fact these cells were being raced for a reason - it tells us more about embryo development. Racing sperm cells wouldn't tell us much about that (well, except how quickly a species could actually create the embryo in the first place).
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Also it turns out that the contest was about 'crawling' cells not 'swimming' ones (just got a response from the journo).
The blog post now has a neat video Love the way some of the critters are moving backwards....
They were simply the fastest cells that were among those that were raced; many cells from various species of protists, not to mention sperm cells are capable of faster speeds than that.
This is a fair point - though the story points to the fact these cells were being raced for a reason - it tells us more about embryo development. Racing sperm cells wouldn't tell us much about that (well, except how quickly a species could actually create the embryo in the first place).