The race is on

Whenever a timed competition starts, you can say “the race is on.” In today’s current events lesson, you learned that two companies are developing drugs to treat obesity. The potential market is huge, and the two companies are in a competition to increase their production and grab market share. Because they are competing, and because the competition is time-sensitive, we can say “the race is on” to bring these drugs to market.

Use “the race is on” near the beginning of the competition, or when the competition starts to get intense. For example, these drugs have been in development for a long time. Only now that they are shown to be effective, and that they have been approved, is the race on.

Microsoft recently released a new version of Bing, enhanced with text-based artificial intelligence results from ChatGPT. In response, Google rushed out a version of its own AI search. Now the race is on to see if Google or Microsoft will dominate the next generation of search. They have both released the product, and they will be in a competition to see who wins the market for AI-based search.