2020 has arrived, and that means we embark on an eventful sporting calendar including the blockbuster Tokyo 2020 Olympics. There was no better way to kick off the first meetup of the Olympic year than talking about Olympic Innovation.
This past Wednesday, January 22nd we hosted our monthly meetup with a strong lineup of speakers. We had the pleasure of welcoming Matt Robins, Director of Undergraduate and Graduate Sport Management Programs at the University of Delaware, Michelle Hurtado, Principal Management Consultant at the United States Olympic Committee’s Strategy & Business Consulting Department, and Josep Escoda, Head of International Relations and Innovation at CAR Sant Cugat as guest speakers.
All three speakers were in Barcelona taking part in the International Coaching Enrichment Certificate Program (ICECP), a program primarily funded through Olympic Solidarity from the International Olympic Committee. One of the many occasions that bring international high-performance experts, coaches, researchers, and academics together to exchange ideas.
¨I have gained a lot of knowledge working in the high-performance department and for me it’s part of the Olympic movement to contribute and to help grow the more global community¨ – Michelle Hurtado
With our 600-plus-strong Meetup community built over the past year, we focus our Meetups on the next frontier in the sports industry, and so Jordi Ferre, co-founder of N3XT Sports, moderated the Meetup, extracting key insights on how Matt, Michelle and Josep approach high-performance from a technological and data approach.
At the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, the pursuit of the 1% competitive advantage means diving down into big data. Looking at information from athletes who are competing nationally and internationally, large data sets are generated to understand macro trends impacting the large elite group of athletes under the USOPC’s supervision. By doing so, the high-performance teams are able to anticipate new trends, educate their experts, and develop a pipeline of innovative activities that will help gain the competitive advantage that the top athletes are constantly looking for.
CAR Sant Cugat, based just north of Barcelona, is considered as one of the top training centers worldwide, and dozens of Olympic athletes train there on a daily basis taking advantage of the world-class infrastructure made available by the center. Indeed, athletes become very aware of their own responses to training, recovery, and competition by understanding key thresholds in their data. CAR Sant Cugat has created TwinDolly, a system that allows them to record the swimmers from above and under the water in order to perfect the technique of the swimmers during a training session.
¨Our mission is to incorporate innovation by creating and implementing different systems in order to help athletes improve their performance¨– Josep Escoda
Throughout the Meetup, we heard a clear example of how technology is enabling data collection at a holistic level, while also providing the level of granularity needed to make significant improvements in performance. The move within the high-performance sector towards data-driven insights is helping drive infrastructure development discussions, high-performance funding discussions and many more.
¨50% international sports success can be attributed to macro variables that are outside of the sports environment that we are impacted by¨ – Matt Robinson
Over the past few Olympic Games, a larger number of countries have gained medals than ever before, and this trend is driven by a shift in high-performance strategies to allocate their resources more carefully to sports where their medal chances are higher.
To close up the session the panelists gave us their opinion on how the high-performance role will evolve in the future. The three agreed that 1) Figuring out how to connect disruptive data sources and display information in a very usable, consumable format is something that can have a very positive impact across many organizations. 2) Try to innovate with methodologies, and with technologies 3) The future is esports.
Get in touch with our experts at N3XT Sports to understand how we can support your high-performance technology, data and innovation strategies.