The best way to come first is to go last. An analysis of almost 50 years of competitions - including Eurovision Song Contests and world skating championships - has found that contestants are more likely to win if they are among the last to appear before the judges.

　　The study by an American university appears to provide scientific proof that the best man, or woman, does not always win.

　　It found that, on average, the last competitor to appear in the Eurovision Song Contest was more than twice as likely to win as the one who went on first. The first candidate had only a six per cent chance of winning, compared with a 13 per cent chance for the final contestant.

　　The first rounds of figure-skating championships, for which the running order is selected at random, yielded more dramatic results. The final skater had a 14 per cent chance of victory, making him or her more than four times as likely to win as the first skater, who had just a three per cent chance of winning.

　　The study showed a gradual worsening of chances for contestants who appeared earlier in the running order. A candidate who appears first in a contest is two per cent less likely to win than one who appears second. A candidate who appears second is two per cent less likely to win than one who appears third, and so on.

　　Dr Wandi Bruine de Bruin, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the author of the study, said: "This effect can have serious implications for the careers of performers.

　　"Most of the attention goes to the winner and you wouldn't want to come in second just because of your place in the programme."

　　The findings are published in the March issue of Acta Psychologica, a scientific journal.

　　Robert Hardman, a senior lecturer in psychology at London Metropolitan University who specialises in the science of decision-making, said that the results were intriguing. He suggested that the effect was caused by the limitations of the human memory.

　　"When people make comparisons, they aren't really capable of making a lot of fine-grade discrimination. When candidates appear at the beginning of a contest, judges have little to compare them to and are perhaps wary of the scores they give," he said.

　　"Later on, when judges are able to compare the candidates to those that have gone before, they might give more extreme marks because they feel more confident about their judgments."