Olympic team borrows F1 technology

Cycling and rowing to benefit from McLaren system that tells engineers how cars are performingSystems designed to help Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton shave a fraction of a second from their Formula One lap times will help Team GB do the same at Stratford velodrome and Dorney Lake, after McLaren unveiled technology to help Britain win a record medal haul in the 2012 Olympics.The McLaren Group headquarters in Woking, Surrey, a new arm of the business designed to find other applications for the millions invested in Formula One technology, has revealed the first fruits of a not-for-profit partnership with UK Sport.McLaren's Applied Technology arm has created a wireless system that measures the relationship between paddle, boat and athlete on the white water canoeing course, or stores data and telemetry information as cyclists hurtle around the velodrome. It uses the same technology that measures minute changes in the relationship between car, track and driver and relays the data to banks of analysts in the pits and back at its Surrey base during a Formula One race."We approached McLaren because they have unique expertise in areas of need for some of our sports," said Dr Scott Drawer, head of research and innovation at UK Sport, which will invest more than £300m in Olympic sport in the run up to 2012.McLaren is also working with the rowing and sailing teams and hopes to extend the partnership to other sports.The motivation is not entirely altruistic. Aside from providing positive publicity for motor racing, a sport sometimes criticised for its profligate ways, the company hopes to develop commercial applications for the technology. That could result in the systems being built into clothes to help monitor personal fitness. McLaren might also adapt its Formula One simulator, which was developed over 12 years, for winter sports such as bobsleigh.The British cycling team, which won a record 14 medals, eight of them gold, at the Beijing Olympics, has been celebrated for its fastidious approach to the "aggregation of marginal gains", and that approach has been extended to its search for new ways to measure and analyse the performance of Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and the rest of its squad.Chris Boardman, the 1992 Olympic gold medallist who now leads research for British cycling, said: "Data gathering is happening in the background. Each rider has a transponder on their back. Rather than a coach lining people up, timing them, writing it in a book and someone analysing that information, now it's automatic."It means the coach is freed up to reflect on what is going on and the time he would have spent analysing huge amounts of data is freed up to do other things. That frees up imagination and that's really hard to quantify. Data and numbers help you change athletes' behaviour."McLaren Applied Technologies' ­programme director, Caroline Hargrove, said: "The technology is similar to Formula One. Because we have so much data on the cars, we have won this battle with systems integration that other sports have not yet hit. Cycling were the first to hit a wall. They didn't have time to analyse all their riders, they were doing it all in spreadsheets and were not able to capitalise on what they were getting. They can now look things up quickly and turn it around quickly."Boardman said that working with other sports had been a factor in British cycling's success. Before Beijing, the cycling research group made 1,742 improvements to equipment and clothing."One of the things we've really learned to value is exploration. In pretty much any business, you'll find that their last big step change was prompted by something that happened outside. We put aside a year to go and explore," he said. "We accept the fact that after a year we might come back with nothing because that's a worthwhile risk."Olympic games 2012Formula OneCyclingRowingOwen Gibsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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