App puts Toon at top of league for technology
CLUB AT THE CUTTING EDGE OF SPORTS SCIENCE WITH NEW DEVICE
THERE is a quiet revolution going on at Newcastle United.
Away from the manoeuvres at Premier League HQ in Paddington, NE1 and Riyadh, United are about to roll out one of the most cutting-edge appliances of sport science seen in elite sport.
It started this week with a smartphone app dedicated to protecting the squad against the coronavirus as they returned to ‘phase one’ training after two months working from home as the Premier League season was curtailed.
Soon that will be expanded into a programme a decade in the making and – to quote the company who have designed it – the “next step” in sports science.
Today The Chronicle is getting a first look around @thlete, the new smartphone app about to be delivered to Newcastle players which is, well, seriously smart.
Powered by an artificial intelligence engine created by a team with 16 PhDs behind them, it is the culmination of an eight-year partnership between United’s head of medicine Paul Catterson and Orecco, the whip-smart Galway company transforming the world of sports science.
In short, ahead of its roll-out across the NBA, the NFL and to some of the world’s elite athletes, United players will soon have access to one of the most cutting-edge AIpowered sports apps anywhere on the globe.
By inputting reams of data collected by Dr Catterson and head of sports science Jamie Harley – gleaned from everything from blood tests to training and match stats and sleep data – each player is given a highly personalised programme and nutritional plans.
On top of that, the app also brings up live, real-time data for players to dig into about upcoming matches.
So if, for example,
Allan Saint-Maximin
wants to know what the next right-back he is facing tends to do in the final 10 minutes of a close game, with two taps of the button that data is available.
It is a huge, ambitious project and, in the age of the coronavirus, a Covid19 tracker has been built and added to it which adapts it to the ‘new normal’ Premier League clubs are adapting to.
Dr Brian Moore, Orreco CEO, said: “This is a platform we have built together which incorporates technical and tactical and includes mind, body and spirit as well.
“It is 10 years in development and Paul is truly ahead of the curve with this. He has been world-class in terms of the sort of data he has been collecting for a a long time.
“To have all of that has meant we can build this platform for Newcastle United which is a real investment in their players.”
Like the rest of the Premier League, United have a wealth of performance data available to them. From GPS stats from training sessions and matches right down to sleep logs and pin-prick blood tests which show inflammation levels, enzymes and free radicals in blood, there are now a range of tests which happen every day to ensure players can maximise performance.
With the @thlete app, that huge amount of information is condensed into the yellow and black screens which flicker in front of me, crunching the data into useful insights.
“It has taken 20 years to do this,” Dr Moore says, highlighting the