Technology in Sports
With sports and technology, we can model a whole sport and we can use it to push the physical boundaries of the discipline, and What if we introduce technology in sports? Sports and technology are the two deadly combos anyone has ever thought if the technology in sports gets approved then it would be truly insane. So, Let's start with the 100-meter sprint. We've collected data on the average performances of the top 25 athletes in the 100-meter sprint every year since the 1890s. You can immediately see some pretty major spikes and steps, most obviously from the First and Second World Wars, which worsens performance dramatically. The first post-war Olympics were in 1948, so we usually use that year as the baseline for any comparisons that we do.
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| Technology in Sports |
In the 1970s, there's a dramatic increase in times, which was due to the introduction of fully automated timing. Removing the reaction time of the judges setting their stopwatches (technology in sports) going increased the time recorded for all runners. There's another smaller step-change in 2008 when Usain Bolt came on the scene with his dramatic win at the Beijing Olympics. What's interesting is that, if we remove Bolt from our top 25 and just analyze the other 24, the step change is still there. At these elite levels, it looks like a standout athlete makes everyone else perform better too. The men's 100-meter sprint has improved by around 5% since 1948. Over the same period, the men's javelin has gone some 70 meters to 85 meters, an increase of 21%.
Technology in Sports Performance Improvements
Are we really saying that the performance improvements in these two sports are that different?
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| Technology in Sports |
Well, one issue we have is that, with sprinting, our measurement is time, while, for javelin, it's distance. What we need is a common metric. That shared measure is an energy calculation. And as an example of how we can visualize that, we can look at the women's 100-meters freestyle swimming event. Now, this circle represents a baseline performance in 1948. And by 2010, the performance had improved by 52% here. Now, what are the technologies in sports that contributed to that performance improvement? Well here, we have the globalization effects. And by that, I mean population increase, nutrition, coaching, professionalization. But there are other effects that have improved performance in swimming as well.
Here, we have the Olympic games oscillation. And that occurs every four years, so that, in an Olympic year, you see a small but measurable performance improvement. What about technologies in sports that we've allowed? Well, in swimming, we think about swimsuits. And in 2000, they went from the traditional female style and the Speedos to the longer, full-body suits. More impressively, though, goggles, hats, and shaving down had quite a large effect prior to those swimsuits.
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| Technology in Sports |
The other thing we've noticed in swimming is the transition between hand timing and fully automated timing, something we've seen in other sports. So with these statistics and with this methodology, we can look at the effect of different factors on sport. And one thing we've noticed is how globalisation, sports and technology has started to reach its limits. The Industrial Revolution has had its impact. Most of the improvements in sports and technology we're seeing in sport today are smaller in nature and due to technology in sports.
We started our journey with the birth of modern sport and its development, hand-in-hand, with technology in sports. But performances are starting to plateau. And even with the occasional Usain Bolt mixing things up, world records are going to become rare in some of our sports. Now athletes don't like that, audiences don't like that, and the ruling bodies don't like that. Sports technology, engineering will hold the balance between the world of the possible, that's Newton's laws, and the world of the allowed, that's the rules of sport. Now the rules of sport are completely arbitrary. They're steeped in tradition, but they do change. There were 300 ancient Olympic games lasting over 1,200 years. And in that time, we went from the sprint to chariot racing. So the science technology and engineering we're learning with today's sports will be used to develop those sports that we'll see in the 300th modern Olympic games 1,000 years from now.
Technology in Sports Broadcasting
If you think about the engagement that fans have with the sport they want to be able to see it at any time any device they want to be able to interact in a way with the sports stars almost like celebrities sports really generates utter loyalty and passion. All of the things that mean that you'll have better customer experience and actually fans in a way of becoming customers of these big major sports brands and I think that's a big challenge for sporting organizations. It's just being able to instantly see highlights to see what's going on a match yeah I remember 2003 last time Ingram won the World Cup. I think I had to wait for the DVD to come out before I could watch the match again whereas nowadays I as soon as games over get highlights straight away and it's just that instant access in recent years technology in sports really comes to the fore.
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| Technology in Sports |
In terms of helping families get access to content ever quicker it's around content being tailored and personalized to the fans all of those are all adding to the fan experience this is the team I want to follow these are the players I want to watch a highlights reel off and it's only actually with technology in sports and artificial intelligence in sports that can help deliver those personalized experiences. It's video highlights is all when do I want it where do I want it and how do I want it and sports businesses whether that's rugby tennis golf have all got to keep up with that big organizations and you know highly profitable sports teams have access to sports and technology and data isn't it's available to minority sports.
What we did was work with the leatherhead Football Club. We managed to help them analyze the match in a way they just didn't have access to before and what that did was enable them to start analyzing some of their competitors before they played. They finished eighth in the league and well.
Tennis Technology in Sports
I know IBM --is wouldn't say that it was all down to the insights and analytics the coaches certainly said that it helped IBM's been a fantastic partner of Wimbledon for over 30 years. We've consistently tried to take on board the innovations happening in tennis technology in sports and bring them to life. Tennis players are looking for any advantage that they can have over their opponent. It really does come down to the smallest of margins. It's not really about your forehand or backhand technique. It's what decision you choose to make in a moment and so being able to make data match data statistical data even surface performance data available to players is really fundamental because we're then giving them the opportunity to make those right decisions and hopefully get them through to the next round and maybe even one day become Wimbledon champion.
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| Technology in Sports |
So, I think expectations of how you can interact with your team what you know about them and actually having a voice it isn't anymore just one journalist explaining the summary of a match it's what did your friends think sports fans now expects a personal relationship with their club's sport is all about the community it's about emotion it's about passion and they want to have that personal connection with the clubs and teams that they're and following whether that's your unique context behind the scenes or whether that's personalized offers and a lot of that comes from data so that's data about the fans where are they watching what are they consuming so that the next time they have an interaction with their club that experience can be even more tailored whether you're at the stadium or whether you're watching at home and those personal connections are really where sports going in the future having more driven by data.
So, that was all for technology in sports, sports technology & tennis technology thanks for reading.
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