Olympic teams place bets on latest science

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

To sharpen their competitive edge, some of the U.S. Olympic athletes have been playing brain-controlled video games. Others have gotten room makeovers. Still others are wearing tighter clothing. And almost all of them have been caught on video.

Believe it or not, this is serious stuff: Such technological tricks could make an athlete a fraction of a second faster, or just a little more alert — potentially spelling the difference between a medal-winner and an also-ran. But how do you separate the winning formulas from the high-tech hoohah?

Bill Sands, head of sport biomechanics and engineering for the U.S. Olympic Committee, has seen both sides of the high-tech equation: He says he's sitting on some not-yet-publicized innovations in training that have yielded "staggering results," but he's also turned down plenty of "hare-brained ideas" that he feels aren't worth the athletes' time.

"It's our obligation to do good science," he told MSNBC.com from his office in Colorado Springs, Colo. "People have come up with ideas for performance enhancement that they think are really cool and oftentimes seem logical. But when you test them, they just don't work."

The aerodynamic edge
So what does work? Sands points to the trend toward lighter, aerodynamically designed uniforms for speed-oriented sports such as skating and skiing. "I think we can pretty confidently say that those things work," he said. "The question might be how much of a contributor it is."

Nike The U.S. hockey team's uniforms were redesigned to cut down on aerodynamic drag and improve venting.

Consider the somewhat less baggy uniforms that the U.S. hockey team will be wearing this year at the Turin Olympics. Nike redesigned the jerseys to cut down on aerodynamic drag, developed lighter and better-fitting skates and even reduced the weight of the socks by 40 percent, said company spokesman Nate Tobecksen.

During testing, the tighter uniforms made skaters ever-so-slightly speedier: "From red line to red line, it's like a blade's-length difference in speed," Tobecksen told MSNBC.com. "So it could mean the difference for getting to the puck as opposed to being taken off the puck."

Nike also used new breeds of polyester materials to create short-track speed skating suits that are half the weight of the previous models. Meanwhile, Spyder outfitted the U.S. ski team in suits that that incorporate a material designed to harden upon impact, protecting vulnerable joints from injury. Spyder's suits, like Nike's, have been extensively tested in wind tunnels.

"We can make a suit even more aerodynamic," Spyder spokeswoman Laura Wisner told MSNBC.com, "but it wouldn't be race-legal."

Wind-tunnel testing has become routine for checking the aerodynamics of sport equipment ranging from ski poles to bobsleds, as well as the technique of Olympic racers in skiing, skeleton, skating and luge events.

Instant replay
Another high-tech routine has to do with video monitoring of the athletes' performance. During training, the Olympians face almost as much video-based second-guessing as the tribes in the "Survivor" immunity challenges. One of the leaders in the field is Swiss-based Dartfish, whose video analysis software is being used by nine national Olympic teams, including the U.S. team. (The technology will also be on display in NBC's Olympic coverage.)

"We can superimpose two different ski runs, put them side by side and see why one was going faster than the other," Dartfish spokeswoman Nicole Hill told MSNBC.com. She said the applications for the software were spreading to other pursuits as well, ranging from physical therapy to dancing to cheerleading.

Sands said the scientific value of video analysis was virtually a no-brainer: "You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find someone who would say seeing something and understanding it better doesn't work. Most of science — like X-rays, or thermal imaging — involves the application of technologies that just help people see things in ways that they haven't seen them before. And slow motion is a classic example of that."

So what specifically doesn't work? Sands says he's heard claims for products ranging from bee pollen and turtle soup to high-tech shoe insoles. "Our typical response is, where is the data?" he said. "Show me where you've tested elite athletes with or without the insoles, and where the ones with the insoles have jumped higher. ... If you don't have the data, then I can't help you. I'm a scientist. I get swayed by the data."

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