‘Technology has revolutionised sport in India’
The panel discussed the role of data and its application in sport.
With teams and players looking to leverage technology for skill enhancement, analysis and even injury management, a four-member panel discussed the role of data and its application in sport at Sportstar’s first-ever South Sports Conclave.
“The application of technology in sport is broadly segmented between an athlete, the spectator and an administrator. A player would depend on technology for skill development and analysis. There is a level of disservice offered to a paying spectator in our context. A spectator walks into a stadium and it is a nightmare in most cases. From an administrator’s point of view, there is transparency and integrity to the way you function by using technology,” former table tennis player and cofounder of Tenvic, Vasanth Bhardwaj said.
“There is an explosion of data happening on the athlete. You need systems to correlate between technique, tactic, workload, injury and translate it into a language that coaches and players can understand. Twenty-five percent goes into research and analytics, 25 percent goes into how well you are embedded to the subconscious mind of the player and 50 percent goes into the execution. How well you [a player] execute depends on the first two blocks,” Ramky S, promoter of Sportsmechanics said.
“In terms of data, the most important thing is to make sense of the data. One revolution we have to make is to explain and give sense to the data. As a trainer aware of science, you have to select a meaningful and small amount, make sense of it and get your athlete onboard,” Dr. Kevin Caillaud, CIO of Kinvent, a French sports tech company, said during the discussion titled ‘Technology Powering Sports Revolution’.
Highlighting the change brought in by technology in medical science, Dr. Sivaraman Arumugam, founder and head of the Arthroscopy and Sports Medicine department at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, said, “Technology has revolutionised sport in India. Technology whereby you assess the performance of an athlete via biomechanics, physiology and sports psychology. Also, use that for training and then rehabilitation. In the last decade, rehabilitation has seen a big change. There is not much change in surgical technique.”