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JULY 2012
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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
CLIVE BRUNSKILL/GETTY IMAGES (ZAGUNIS); JEFF QUINN (SHOE)
THEARCHER’S
BRAINWAVES
The London 2012 Olympic Games will be by far the most high-tech sporting event in human history.
Presenting some of the amazing innovations to which athletes are turning to enhance their performance
and take home the gold.
BY JONMARCUS
T
HEWORLD’SGREATEST
Athlete flexes his toes just
shy of the foul line, ready
for his sprint along the
runway to the long-jump pit. Beside
him, under the Southern California
sun, stands an equally determined-
looking team of engineers from
one of the world’s trendiest car
companies, fiddling with a pair of
cameras connected through a tangle
of wires to a bank of laptops and
video monitors.
It’s not the set of a TV commercial.
These aren’t those kinds of cameras.
They can “see,” in stereo, the location,
speed and distance of objects, and
they’ll be in your car 10 years from
nowtowatchout for pedestrians and
help you stay in your lane. But today
they’rehelpingAmericanBryanClay,
reigning Olympic Gold Medalist in
the decathlon—the event whose
champion gets to claim the title of
“World’s Greatest Athlete”—train for
his goal of becoming the first man
ever to take home three Olympic
medals in the sport.
Clay starts up the runway, one
stride, then another, gaining speed
for 20 paces. The faster he’s going
when he hits the board, and the
lower the angle of his takeoff, the farther
his center of gravity will carry him across
the pit. His foot slams flat against the
ground before he rises into the air; his hips
arc forward and his torso springs upright.
Afterward, Clay walks over to the
laptops so that the technicians can
instantly play back his run for him, with
down-to-the-millisecond details of
his velocity and formonevery frame.
“If you’re serious about trying to
win, this is the type of information
you need,” says Clay, 32. “Athletes are
always looking for that next piece of
technology that’s going to help us
train be er. Every 100th of a second
or centimeter couldbe the difference
between going down in glory and
going down in flames.”
High-tech tools like these, devel-
oped by BMW in its Mountain View,
Calif., innovation lab, are merging
science with sports more closely
than at any time since the absent-
minded professor added Flubber to
the shoes of the Medfield College
basketball team. The trend is being
drivenby huge advances inwearable
sensors and wireless communica-
tion, and by a generation of athletes
who have grown up fluent in Xbox
and Wii. Researchers also know
that products they develop for elite
competitors could end up reaping
massive profits on the multibillion-
dollar sports mass market.
But the primary goal is to give
Olympic competitors incremental
advantages at a time when winning
and losing comes down to a fraction
of a second or a fraction of an inch.
“The technology is ge ing crazy,” says
Phil Cheetham, senior sport technolo-
gist for the U.S. Olympic Commi ee and
a former Australian Olympic gymnast.
“And it’s becoming usable as a coaching
tool, rather than just by the scientists as
a research tool.”
EGYPT
24
MOROCCO
21
PORTUGAL
22
NIGERIA
23
SLOVENIA
22
IRELAND
23
THAILAND
21
INDIA
20
“COMPAREDWITH
THE LAST OLYMPICS,
WE’RE SEEING AT
LEAST TWICE AS
MUCH TECHNOLOGY
BEING USED.”
LEAP YEAR
American decathlete
Bryan Clay goes
high-tech in search
of an edge