1. Taekwondo Sensors That Beat Human Judges
During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, referees missed a high kick by British athlete Sarah Stevenson that should have won her the fight. She was later reinstated to the competition, but the incident showed that the Korean martial art could be prone to human error. To remedy this, during the 2009 World Cup Taekwondo Team Championships in Baku, combatants wore magnetic socks and body protectors containing electronic sensors. For the Rio 2016 Olympics, competitors' headgear will be hooked up, and they will be able to request video replays. "It takes less power to register on the head protector than the torso," says Jinbang Yang, director general of the World Taekwondo Federation. "Athletes can focus on accuracy rather than force." With scoring weighted to reward roundhouses to the face, the fights should be fairer, more exciting and safer.
2. Radio Chips That Track Football Players
How do you observe multiple stampeding National Football League players? By using Zebra, the logistics company that was appointed last year as the US football league's official "on-field player-tracking provider". Zebra uses electro-magnetic radio-frequency identification, technology that's common in retail, manufacturing and transport, to keep track of inventory and assets - in this case, players. Two penny-sized sensors are implanted in players' shoulder pads; they emit signals 15 times a second, which are picked up by receivers mounted between the upper and lower decks of the stadium. Unlike regular GPS, which is accurate only to a maximum of three metres, Zebra can pinpoint a player to 15cm, and can even tell which way they're facing. "American football is a contact sport," says Jill Stelfox, vice-president of Zebra. "Any tracking technology must be able to detect and differentiate players in a pile."
Zebra also measures speed, distance covered and acceleration (or deceleration): what the NFL has dubbed "next-gen stats". The data gives fans added insight into live broadcasts and feeds into the Xbox NFL app. Several teams use Zebra - which can also indicate mechanical load (how hard an athlete is working) during practice. That in turn enables them to tailor personalised training programmes that can monitor progress, manage fatigue and minimise injury risk. The tags are Bluetooth-enabled, meaning that they can be paired with other wearables such as heart rate monitors or patches that gauge hydration. "Player tracking is changing the way sports are watched, coached, analysed and played," Stelfox says.
3. The Team That Relies On IP To Succeed
The oldest international sporting trophy, the America's Cup, is a technology arms race: a £7 million hydrofoil craft is attached to Boeing 737-sized wings hovering above the water with as little as one per cent of their surface area immersed - at speeds three times faster than the wind that's propelling them. Nowadays, Formula 1 manufacturers are restricted by exact design regulations, but there are no such rules in the America's Cup, enabling teams to innovate. Which might be the reason that Martin Whitmarsh, the former principal of McLaren, and Adrian Newey, the chief technical officer of Red Bull, have joined Ben Ainslie Racing, the team set up to win the competition for the UK. Whitmarsh is CEO and Newey has a consultancy role.
Although the team is focusing on victory in the final set of races in Bermuda in July 2017, Whitmarsh is thinking more long-term, with a move to a new base in Portsmouth (partly inspired by McLaren's iconic Technology Centre) and away from the campaign-based approach to previous America's Cups. "We're building a team and facilities that enable us to manage technical IP, which is the strength of any F1 team, or any technology company, from Apple to Toyota," Whitmarsh says.
4. Scans That Quantify You In 3D
"When people get a scan for a medical reason, if you're given the data, it's almost impossible to do anything with it unless you already know what you're doing," says Brandon Whitcher, chief scientist at Klarismo, a health startup that lets consumers use medical imaging to understand the physiology and composition of their bodies.
You'll probably encounter a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner only for medical investigations. Klarismo, however, sees a missed opportunity. "We want to detach the myth of an MRI scanner and treat it as another piece of everyday technology," Whitcher says.
Klarismo uses the MRI as a quantitative tool for decision-making, producing highly detailed visualisations of customers' bodies that measure volumes of muscle tissue, fat and organs. It doesn't claim to offer the diagnostic quality insight of a CT scan, which a radiologist might look at, but a visual version of the quantified self. "If you want to learn more about yourself, you can scan your whole body, or just do your neck or knees."
Klarismo is targeting doctors working with elite sports teams: "It's critical to know exactly how much fat versus muscle an athlete has," Whitcher says. The price - from £50 depending on the part of the body being measured - is intended to offer an entry point to the non-professional athlete training for an event who wants to know more about their musculature.
5. Data Analysis That Wins World Cups
EXOS is a Phoenix, Arizona-based training, nutrition and physical therapy team-behind-the-teams, with clients across a wide range of sports, the US military and first responders. "We've been trusted by the best to help them get better," says Mark Verstegen, founder and president of EXOS. "It's all about personalisation and prescription."
EXOS oversaw the victorious 2014 World Cup campaign of the German football side. Only the USA - another EXOS client - ran further than Die Mannschaft, who collectively covered a mean of 113.8 kilometres in the group stage. In the quarter-final, the Germans ran nearly eight kilometres more than their opponents, France: data suggests this was the equivalent of having three-quarters of an extra player.
But unless you know how to act on this data - sourced from adidas miCoach trackers in the players' boots - it's just noise. Verstegen says that there are two questions to ask: "So what?" and "Now what?" EXOS answers these by breaking the data down to get a reading of players' functional states, stress loads and performance outcomes and then devises individual plans based on this data. The company also works with a number of corporates, such as Intel, to understand employee performance throughout the day.
EXOS works with athletes on the psychological aspects of their performance, from focusing on intrinsic motivation to number tests with the distraction of crowds. Verstegen emphasises the importance of an individual's thoughts on waking up.
"We reprogramme them to run through how their winning day will go, make their first movement about breathing, hydrate and fuel their body and mind and do their specific prehab mobility and stability activation," Verstegen says. "If we clean up this first ten minutes, it makes everything they do better."
EXOS tidies up the final minutes too, conducting sleep research with the US football team. "Optimising a player's sleep hygiene is a powerful way we can upgrade performance, decrease injury and improve cognitive function," he says.
6. The Man Aiming To Smash The Two-Hour Marathon
With the world record for the marathon standing at 2:02:57, the two-hour barrier is within reach. Yannis Pitsiladis, professor of sport and exercise science at Brighton University, believes it will be breached by 2019 - and he's on a quest to do just that.
His SUB2 project began in 2014, seven years after he and a team of researchers observed the preparations of elite athletes in Ethiopia and Kenya, the world powers of distance running. "There was literally no scientific aspect [to what they were doing]," he says. "We thought: imagine what they could do with the best ideas available."
He assembled a team of trainers, nutritionists, biomechanics specialists and data scientists to work on every aspect of performance. One of the biggest obstacles is not physical but mental: in the absence of evidence that it can be done, athletes apply a psychological handbrake called "programming". Conversely, when a record is broken, the old record can suddenly be repeatedly beaten.
SUB2's ambitions go further than just breaking a record. It aims to reinvigorate public interest in elite marathoning, partly by busting the myth that it's exclusively the domain of east Africans. And doing the unbelievable cleanly will help restore the reputation of athletics. The SUB2 committee hopes to bury Chariots of Fire amateurism with a norm of professional athletes supported by teams of sport-science experts: "Rebranding and modernising athletics are really what we want," Pitsiladis says.
SUB2 also aims to fast-track innovation. Pitsiladis declares himself frustrated with the pace (and efficacy) of advances in sport science. It's not just only spin-offs such as running trainers: SUB2, he says, could lead to giant leaps in molecular technology, personalised medicine and injury treatment.
7. The Filter That Spots Trainability
As UK Sport's deputy director of performance, Chelsea Warr saw potential in the current world number-one rower Helen Glover - who won Team GB's first gold at London 2012 - and skeleton bobsleigher Lizzy Yarnold, who last year completed a grand slam of Olympic, European, World Championship and World Cup titles. But it's Lutalo Muhammad's bronze in taekwondo at London that, says Warr, is "particularly special".
"It shows that the principles don't just apply to the big 'CGS' sports - those measured in centimetres, grams and seconds - but also technical ones," says Warr, who is now a non-executive director at the UK Lawn Tennis Association. For instance, Glover, who's 1.78m, stood on tiptoes to gain entry to Sporting Giants - Steve Redgrave's talent programme - to beat the cut-off of 1.80m for the programme. "It's like a frequent-flyer club: you need a certain amount of points," Warr says. "But then we look at who can become a gold, silver or bronze member." Intangibles such as "the right stuff" become metrics, she says. "Over time, you can measure commitment."
Warr has examined how elite organisations determine who makes the cut. One lesson has been the importance of trainability. "Someone's starting level is not highly predictive of what they can do," Warr says. "How they respond is far more accurate." A meticulously planned curriculum is key. "At the Yehudi Menuhin music school, they had a big board with what each child had to do for every hour of every day to become world class. It's by design, not luck," Warr says.
With Bangor University, Warr studied the psychology of "super elite" athletes. "We charted them from the age of six to becoming champions," Warr says. Research is underway into accelerating learning. "One of the best ways is making mistakes," says Warr. "But coaching programmes don't always encourage that." Fail smart, win fast.
8. Military Tricks Designed To Defy Ageing
What's the common denominator in the age-defying final flourishes of NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, tennis ace Serena Williams and boxer Bernard Hopkins? Mackie Shilstone.
The New Orleans-based "career extension specialist" is a pioneer of sports science. He used DEXA X-ray scans to measure boxers' bone, muscle and fat down to the nearest gram in the days when most fighters were trying to make weight by sweltering in bin bags. Ahead of the 2015-16 NFL season, Shilstone had the injury-ravaged Peyton Manning analysed by a number of doctors, physical therapists and dieticians. "He asked me if I thought he could do one more year," Shiltone says. "I said, 'I know you can.'" Manning ended the season by lifting the Super Bowl trophy.
Over the past 35 years, Shilstone has honed his methods across a wide range of fields. For instance, he had Serena Williams perform the "run and gun" drills used by US Army Rangers: in combat, soldiers rarely shoot standing absolutely still, and they practise firing their weapons on the move. Shilstone applied this to tennis, developing intense drills where Williams would have to play, say, 20 shots at different points on the court within 45 seconds. His observations of F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters taking off from a dead stop on the deck of an aircraft carrier increased the effectiveness of kickers in the NFL. But, arguably, the career that the spry 65-year-old has been most successful in extending is his own. His secret: rising at 4.30am to spend at least an hour reading medical journals before starting his day.
9. Design Tweaks That Reinvented The Wheel
Lewis Hamilton and the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team have rethought the steering wheel. It might look like an Xbox controller on drugs, but it's designed like this for a reason: all the critical controls need to be within reach of Hamilton's thumbs so he doesn't have to move his hand from the custom grips while taking a corner. (Those at the bottom are for when he's on a straight.)
F1 steering wheels have been getting smaller and less circular for several years - it's more efficient and safer for a driver not to turn through 360° or go overhand. Losing sections of the wheel saves weight without sacrificing stiffness, thanks to advances in carbon fibre. Mercedes' drive to lighten the load extends to the thinness of the rubber coating - which is relatively heavy - on the myriad buttons. The material cost of the wheel is estimated to be £40,000.
The wheel has to be removable in case of mechanical failure and for safety reasons. Most settings are stored in the computers in the vehicle - although a backup has to be programmed. Every driver has preferences, meaning each steering wheel is set up as a bespoke piece of kit.
Click here for a full, annotated guide to Hamilton's steering wheel.
10. Therapy That Slashes Recovery Times
"Anterior cruciate ligament ruptures are no longer necessarily career-ending," says Mike Davison, UK managing director of Isokinetic, a sports-injury treatment specialist, one of 42 FIFA-accredited centres worldwide. "Athletes can come back stronger, both physically and psychologically." In the past, orthopaedic surgery was common for many types of sports injury. Now, physical therapy is used instead of the knife. Cruciate ligament damage used to mean athletes could be sidelined for a year after surgery. Now, with six to eight weeks of pre-op physical therapy, some skiers are back in action after three months.
The centrepiece of Isokinetic's London premises is the Green Room - covered in AstroTurf and kitted out with high-speed cameras that assess an athlete's readiness to return. According to Davison, one of the biggest causes of injury in footballers is poor internal communication at clubs. Which is why Isokinetic has a holistic approach towards recovery: "Overall well-being, reduction of injury risk and mental resilience are baked in," Davison says.
11. Tracking Tech That Can Enable Player Empathy
It's tempting to imagine that Paul Hawkins - creator of Hawk-Eye and a talented cricketer - was moved to invent his ball-tracking tech after becoming the victim of an unjust LBW decision. "That's a part of it," he says. "Most of our company's innovation has been application-led. I've got a PhD in AI, but more importantly I've played cricket all my life and understand what the game needs."
What it needed was multiple cameras to determine where a ball is in space, enabling predictive data to be generated to show what it would do next. Hawk-Eye doesn't claim to be infallible - just very, very reliable. It has a margin of error of 5mm in cricket and 2.2mm in tennis. "It's basic maths but people struggle to accept things they don't understand," Hawkins says.
"We started being used officially by the [cricket] umpire in 2005 and we've made four mistakes since, none of which would have affected whether the batsman was out or not. I'm not sure if we're 99.99 per cent accurate, but we're certainly 99.9 per cent," Hawkins says.
From line calls in tennis to goal-line technology in football, Hawk-Eye is now an integral part of the spectator experience when watching sport live. It's debatable which sport the Basingstoke-based company - which was bought by Sony in 2011 - has changed most. "Tennis has perhaps had the greatest impact from the entertainment side," Hawkins says. "Football is probably the most advanced from an engineering perspective, and it's paving the way for other technology in the game, so it may yet have greater impact."
Hawk-Eye is now being used to officiate NASCAR, horse racing and even hurling. But arguably its biggest contribution is in making sport more exciting through its now-iconic graphics. "The biggest thing that we haven't yet done - and we do have some ideas for it - is telling the story of the pressure that someone is under," Hawkins says. "Imagine showing what was going through Andy Murray's mind when he was serving to become the first British man to win Wimbledon for 77 years... I can relate to that. Even at my level."
12. A Gym Buddy That Measures Fitness Sessions
Hardware designers Dhananja Jayalath and Chris Wiebe used to hit the gym together when they were students. "We wanted a way to work out better and get more out of our time at the gym," says Jayalath. Backed by $3.5m (£2.4m) in seed funding from Chamath Palihapitiya, the pair co-founded Athos, a system of smart clothing with sensors that measure how the body is performing when exercising. The clothing syncs with an iOS app that measures how muscles are firing in order to measure exertion levels. "If you introduce technology into somebody's routine, it's more likely for them to adopt it than if they have to build a new habit around it," says Jayalath.
13. A £2,00-A-Litre Sports Drink For Endurance Drink Industry
Popular in performance nutrition circles for some time, ketones are chemicals produced by the body when people are fasting or following a ketogenic (low-carb, high-fat) diet. They provide an alternative, rapidly used fuel source, forcing the body to burn fat tissue instead of sourcing glucose from carbs. Now they're being produced by University of Oxford researchers for use in a sports drink, designed to prevent athletes hitting the dreaded "wall". Existing products claiming to provide exogenous (ie external) ketones commonly contain high levels of salt or acid and are a "scam" because they're not actually absorbed by the body, according to Kieran Clarke, professor of physiological biochemistry. "They're not metabolised," she says. "We made the ketones into an ester, a type of food we normally eat, which is digestible."
Although Clarke's new nutraceutical has already enhanced elite athletes' stamina in studies to be published this year, she says she has rejected overtures from various professional sports teams while she awaits approval by the UK Food Standards Agency. Another ketone caveat is that they're only really superior to fast-action glucose (sugar) drinks for endurance sports. Then there's the prohibitive cost - currently around £2,000 a litre. "At the moment, we're still making it in the lab, which is very labour-intensive. With scale, the price will go down," says Clarke. "But it's still going to end up being the Rolex of supplements."
14. Tools Designed To Warm Up The Mind
"We didn't think about products or markets once," says Halo Neuroscience co-founder and CEO Daniel Chao. "We wanted to let the data lead us to our first application. We were probably more research institute than startup."
Halo focuses on the motor cortex, which controls co-ordination. Its programme involves three components: the Halo Sport app; Halo Sport, a pair of what look like regular headphones; and Primers, foam "nibs" which sit on the headband and deliver pulses that help neurones fire together.
Halo offers a warm-up for the athlete's mind: you put the headphones on for 20 minutes before a workout. Pulses have been found to increase brain plasticity, or its ability to make new circuits. "Why we do reps in the gym or on the training field is not just to build the body," Chao says, "but so that the brain becomes automatic and, in competition, you can call on it."
Psychologists work on the "software" of the brain - motivation, say. But little is done to upgrade the "hardware". The potential is significant for making athletes go faster and further with more efficient training. The firm is working with the military and medical industry. "We're treating stroke victims," Chao says. "To the extent that we can help LeBron James jump higher, we can help people walk again."
15. Editing Software That Provides Added Insight
Who needs the benefit of hindsight when you can instant-replay what's happening during a match? That's what is offered by Hudl, video-editing software that's being used by 130,000 sports teams worldwide. "Our motto is: If you can record it, you can learn from it," says Hudl CEO David Graff. The app - which received $72.5 million in series B funding led by Accel in April 2015 - allows users to annotate a game, pinpointing particular key passages of play, which makes it easier to review outcomes. It's possible to customise the technology - professionals have tailored it for their particular needs - but it's also used by amateurs, from high-school teams to cheerleading squads to get a view of their performance.
Its instant-replay service, Sideline, includes a portable router that circumvents the network problems of packed stadia. An iPhone will suffice as a camera and footage can be reviewed on a tablet. "We aim to get that clip ready for review in less time than the play itself lasted," Graff says. "The same goes for uploading - we want it online and ready to study within minutes of the game ending." This means that post-game analysis can start on the coach on the way home, in previously dead travelling time - athletes no longer have to come in the next day to review tapes.
With little media coverage or marketing, the Nebraska-based company has grown through word of mouth. Players can create their own accounts and make highlights packages - in the US, some college athletes have been signed on the strength of their reels. Hudl has also been selling pre-roll ads against popular clips and licensing them to media such as ESPN and Bleacher Report, and is moving into association football. Graff's ten-year goal? "To capture and bring value to every moment in sport."
Jamie Millar is a freelance fitness and fashion writer
Additional photography: Rick Tomlinson; Christopher Hoare; Platon. Illustration: Janne IIvonen
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
