Technology and sport, two worlds that continue to get closer. Sports, initially thought of as games, are overtaken by economic and financial issues. To always go faster, higher and further, athletes rely on multiple data to quantify their performance and areas of progression are determined by analyzing the data.
Today, the pursuit of performance and new records has changed the way coaches, technical staff and athletes approach their sport.
What is data?
The data is informative material. In sports, this represents numbers, information and all data collected through technological tools such as performance sensors, simulation algorithms and video.
According to Yannick Nyanga, former France XV player and co-author of Data and sport, the revolution With Aurélie Jean, the data is very rich and its misuse can be a source of sporting setbacks.
With centralized use of performance data in their approach and practice, rugby, soccer, motorsports, athletics, American football and baseball are among the most data-intensive sports.
The influence of data in sport
Today, sport rhymes with performance. Data is ubiquitous, although its impact varies by sport and level of practice. Athletes and the staff who train them seek to control everything, to leave as little room as possible for chance.
The world of sports fully agrees on the need to work with these new sports technologies. In cycling, since its creation in 2010, Sky is one of the first teams to use data. As a result, Christopher Froome, its main rider, won four Tours de France between 2013 and 2017.
By collecting this data in real time, it is also possible to avoid injuries and optimize athletes’ recovery. The financial risks are colossal. In football, on average, a player is injured between 10 and 30% of the time the club pays, this represents around ten million euros per first division club in France, Spain, Germany, Italy and England.
Technology is everywhere and especially in sport, which is always in search of evolution and renewal. However, there are some doubts about the ability of athletes to maintain their spontaneity under the influence of this informative data on their daily results. Therefore, data usage continues to evolve depending on sports and their players.
Source: BFM TV
