ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY and statistical analysis are increasingly being used to enhance the performance of those involved in elite sports. Yet the introduction of super-slick swimming suits and carbon fibre bicycles have also caused a huge headache for the sport governing bodies who must decide whether these developments actually represent a new way of cheating.
These were not minor considerations, said Prof Steve Haake, director of the Centre for Sports Engineering Research at Sheffield Hallam University. Some technical advances, particularly in competitive swimming, have delivered world and Olympic records that will take decades of human sporting development to beat. This in turn could possibly cause these sports to stagnate, Prof Haake said.
He was speaking yesterday on the final day of the British Science Association’s festival of science. His reference was to the use of full-body high-tech swimsuits used during competitions in 2008 and 2009 before they were eventually banned. The suits reduced drag and helped knock minutes off some events, particularly the shorter freestyle sprint races, he said.
He and colleagues Dr David James and Leon Foster conducted an analysis of performance enhancements achieved through the introduction of new gear.
They catalogued top performances from 1948 right up to 2011, collating 65,000 results including 6,000 related to swimming. All showed a slow but steady improvement towards shorter times and new records, with advances in particular in Olympic years.
This steady pace of improved times was broken, however, in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics and in 2009 at the Rome world championships. The suits helped athletes smash records, times which would not have been possible without the use of the advanced swimsuits, Prof Haake said. The statistics clearly showed the impact of the suits and also indicated the problem these records now present.
It could take two decades of natural improvement to reach these times, he said. The public was excited by record-beating performances but these cannot now easily be reached.
A problem with records also occurred in women’s athletics during the “dark period” in the 1980s when the use of performance-enhancing drugs clipped seconds off world records.
Prof Haake argued that swimming’s governing body, Fina, must act in order to reinvigorate the sport in light of his research group’s findings. If it does nothing, Fina risks seeing the public lose interest in the sport, he believes. The body could rebalance the situation by striking out the 2008-2009 results or it could allow the records to stand but then open up access to the advanced suits. It could also follow cycling’s lead when it permitted the use of carbon fibre bikes but slotted them into a new category, meanwhile requiring that older bike models be used to challenge the coveted hour distance record.
Mathematics was also increasingly valuable to performance enhancement in sport, said Prof Bill Gerrard, professor of sports management and finance at Leed University business school. He described how detailed statistical analysis of team sport performance in football, rugby and rugby league could be used to target weaknesses.
He described how US baseball coach Bill Bean used the technique and managed to improve his team’s performance by more than 60 per cent. His approach was rapidly copied and is increasingly used to gauge individual and group delivery on the sporting field.