Cathal Dennehy: Games a golden opportunity for more than the athletes

Because for the engineers behind the tracks, footwear, swimsuits, bikes and aerodynamic apparel we’ll see over the next two weeks, this is also their Olympics — their time to shine.

By now the work is done, the research and testing and prototype phase a distant memory. All that’s left is to sit and watch as their products hit the market, like a proud parent sending their kid off to school.

The link between money and medals is long established, but it can go deeper than athlete funding or expert coaching or top-class facilities.

Money can also buy you fractions of a second when it comes to what’s on your body.

In the triathlon events on Tueday and Wednesday, British athletes will wear trisuits that have been developed over the last three to four years by the UK Sports Institute, utilising the same aerodynamic technology that helped their cycling teams to so many golden moments since 2008.

The details of the suits were revealed by Sean Ingle of the Guardian, who was told by British triathlon performance director Mike Cavendish: “You won’t be able to buy these. They’re bespoke fitted to every athlete..

“It’s quite difficult to get materials that work very well in terms of fluid dynamics, as well as heat dynamics and aerodynamics. What you will probably see is if you look at the back of our women’s suits, they will look different to everybody else’s. The sleeves will look different, along with the way that the zips have been designed, and you won’t be able to see a treatment on them.”

Whether it’s reducing drag on the bike or improving buoyancy in water, the developers know there’s edges to be found if you’re innovative enough. British triathletes will start favourite for gold in both races, though that’s more down to the talent and hard work put in by Alex Yee and Beth Potter than it is their team’s technology.

Swimming doesn’t need reminding of the game-changing influence of technology, given how their record books were shredded following the release of Speedo’s LZR Racer swimsuit in 2008, the design reducing skin friction drag by 24% compared to the brand’s previous version.

At the Beijing Olympics, 94% of gold medals were won by swimmers wearing the suit. The following summer, swimming’s world governing body banned all body-length swimsuits, with men’s swimsuits only allowed to cover the area from waist to knee and women’s allowed to cover from the shoulder to knee. They also imposed restrictions on the material composition.

That put a ceiling on just how much of a difference technology could alter results, with major brands like Speedo, TYR and arena left frustrated, feeling their innovation teams were stifled. Still, they do what they can to find an edge, however small, knowing it might just be the difference. Last November, Speedo unveiled its Fastskin LZR Intent and LZR Valor suits, which a huge chunk of the world’s best are wearing this week, among them Australian star Ariarne Titmus.

“Everyone around the world is training hard, everyone is finding new ways to recover faster so they can train better, I think technology is the thing that can separate whether you’re going to come first, second or third,” said Titmus, who’s never been one to reject technological advances.

The same is true of the greatest marathoner in history, Eliud Kipchoge, who will attempt to win his third straight Olympic title next week.

The Kenyan was one of those to benefit from Nike sneaking its game-changing Vaporfly shoe into top-level races before anyone really knew it existed, Kipchoge wearing an early prototype to victory in his first Olympic marathon win in 2016 — the upper of the shoe disguised to make it look like the model that was freely available to buy.

In the years since, every road running world record has been smashed due to the super-shoe technology, which features stiff carbon fibre plates and hyper-responsive lightweight foams, with World Athletics forced to act and impose limits on stack heights in 2020. 

“We live in the 21st century and we need to accept change,” said Kipchoge.

“Development goes hand in hand with technology.”

The same technology has been in use in track spikes since 2019, though with stricter limits on stack heights (the shoe’s midsole depth) the effect has been less pronounced, but still visible. 

German researchers last year found a performance improvement in eight out of 10 events from the years before and after super spikes hit the market, ranging from 0.4% improvement in the men’s 100m to 1.52% in the women’s 400m hurdles.

Then there is the track itself. Italian company Mondo Group has long supplied the track for the Olympic Games and an article on the BBC website last week stated that Mondo said the purple track it has laid at the Stade de France — where the athletics will get under way on Friday — is “2% faster than Tokyo’s in 2020.”

It might seem small, but in athletics terms 2% is massive. That would turn the fastest 100m time in the world this year — 9.77 by Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson — into 9.57, faster than Usain Bolt’s world record.

It seemed too good to be true. And so I reached out to Mondo last week to ask about the 2% claim cited in the article and quickly heard back from its vice president, Maurizio Stroppiano, who explained that percentage improvement related to the “net impulse measure” of the track, “which is derived from the difference between the improvement of the braking impulse and the improvement of the propulsive impulse.

“This design increases the net horizontal impulse by 2.6% and improves shock absorption capacity by 1.9%, which reduces the physical strain on athletes while enhancing their performance,” he explained.

“The improvement in net impulse is expected to translate into better performance, but it is not correct to assume that this will result in a 2% improvement of average time.

“The actual performance will be determined by the talent of the athletes. While the track provides a great surface with better elastic qualities than before, it’s important to note that the actual impact on performance times cannot be precisely predicted.”

Those at Mondo are sure about one thing before the action gets going: This is the fastest track they’ve ever made.

And with shoe brands also sending their latest and greatest creations, expect more records to fall once the athletes rocket out of the blocks.

If it happens, the achievement will be theirs, of course, a result of their talent, hard work and discipline. But as the limits of human performance get repositioned, it’s just maybe not theirs alone.