How Canada’s slopestyle snowboard team is using data to hunt for an Olympic edge

WHITEHORSE Canada’s prime freestyle snowboarders filter right into a mountain lodge simply exterior Whitehorse throughout a very arctic spell of climate. They slowly pull on their gear to coach on a soar constructed particularly to assist them put together for the Beijing Olympics.

Together with all the same old layers from slouchy snow pants to toques and helmets emblazoned with vitality drink sponsors is slightly sensor field they strap to their boot.

That sensor has change into commonplace fare for Canada’s slopestyle snowboard group. And with that little field, Ming-Chang Tsai, a efficiency and information scientist affectionately known as the group’s rocket scientist, collects a wealth of knowledge on the G-forces their our bodies endure touchdown their methods or, in some instances, crashing.

At different factors, throughout this two week coaching camp in November, Chris Bertram pulls out his spherical drone and headset. The snowboarders could make the drone hover with their minds once they put themselves in a “stream state.”

That’s a extra scientific model of what athletes throughout all sports activities typically name “the zone” — the place all the things appears to miraculously come collectively and so they’re capable of carry out their finest. Bertram helps these athletes learn to name that up beneath probably the most pressure-filled circumstances, equivalent to having one run left to find out whether or not they step on the Olympic podium or not.

An information scientist with a masters in aerospace engineering who used to design planes for Boeing and somebody with a PhD in expertise acquisition should not the type of folks one often finds working with snowboarders.

Canada’s snowboarders have had appreciable success within the comparatively new Olympic occasions of slopestyle and massive air. This group gained 4 medals on the 2018 Video games in Pyeongchang. However, as with all new disciplines, the extent of competitors rises as extra nations put money into their athletes and applications.

The kind of sport evaluation and innovation that’s on show in Whitehorse is a part of Canada Snowboard’s hunt for an edge. It’s seeking to preserve Canadian riders on the prime of a sport the place the bodily calls for and dangers develop because the methods get larger.

“It’s the evolution of the game,” says Elliot Catton, a slopestyle and massive air coach. “After we began out we simply constructed a superb soar, acquired (snowmobiles to run riders again to the highest) and did loads of laps. That’s not going to provide us the benefit anymore. Everyone is doing that.”

Many freestyle riders take pleasure in snowboard’s roots and traditions, they worth freedom, individuality and magnificence. So it’s tough stuff to meld information evaluation right into a tradition the place athletes insist how they “really feel” on snow is all that basically issues to them.

That’s why, when Tsai was first introduced in to work with the group, he discovered himself attempting to research how snowboarders acquired top off a soar whereas hiding behind timber in Whistler.

“I used to be standing there for 2 days, actually hiding behind timber, simply watching them and pondering, ‘How am I going to do that?’ ” Tsai remembers, with amusing.

It was a sluggish introduction. Flash ahead just a few years and the snowboarders think about him a part of the group. “Now they arrive and ask me for the sensors, they’re so used to it,” he says.

The sensor information breaks down every athlete’s coaching session, together with what number of jumps and, most significantly, a G-force measurement of how laborious they had been on the physique.

“Their landings are primarily a collision that we need to quantify,” says Jeremy Sheppard, the off-snow coach who has introduced collectively an eclectic group of specialists to create a novel high-performance setting for snowboarding.

“Should you go and hit the soar 50 instances immediately and your whole landings are just a few Gs, present up tomorrow and do it once more. However for those who had been struggling, what we name battling with a sure trick and also you weren’t touchdown nice, now you might need seven Gs, 9 or 12 Gs on a crash or one thing like that. Effectively, that’s a unique 50 jumps.”

“You need to know the way insulting has gravity been to them.”

Ask most riders in regards to the sensor information and the reply is a variation of the next: “I don’t actually take note of that stuff,” or “it’s cool, nevertheless it doesn’t change something for me.”

“Snowboarding is rather a lot about emotions,” says Laurie Blouin, the ladies’s slopestyle silver medallist on the 2018 Video games. “Nobody can resolve for you.”

Sheppard agrees that the info ought to by no means make the selections however he says it might and must be used to assist inform and enhance decision-making, particularly on the subject of returning to snow after an harm.

That’s one thing two-time Olympic medallist Mark McMorris understands properly, having returned from extra accidents than he cares to recollect. As a pioneer of the game, he has additionally watched the dangers develop alongside the development of methods.

Because the calls for of the game develop, so does the hassle behind the scenes.

“The game is getting loopy,” McMorris says. “However it’s nonetheless simply snowboarding to me and that’s how I deal with it.”

Snowboarders “should not the categories who're in swim membership,” says Sheppard, choosing a sport the place success comes from years of structured coaching and following the path of coaches.

Skateboarding, browsing and backcountry filming may very well be coaching for McMorris. When an enormous snowfall hits Montreal, Olympic gold medallist Sébastien Toutant grabs a videographer and rides by the streets leaping off snowbanks and sliding down handrails.

“Portray inside the traces is just not essentially their factor,” Sheppard says. “They must be the very best artists of their world however they must be extremely athletic to outlive the game.”

However it’s laborious for coaches and trainers to assist put together them in the event that they don’t even know the true bodily calls for of the game and that’s what the sensor challenge is about.

Greater than the info itself — and what it could sometime have the ability to do for the game — riders like McMorris and Toutant see folks with spectacular credentials caring sufficient to need to make them higher at what they like to do.

“It’s cool that they’re digging for us to make it simpler or to make us carry out slightly higher,” Toutant says.

That’s the essence of what Bertram tries to do. He works to create the situations that permit athletes to be taught extra shortly, retain their expertise longer and carry out beneath strain. That’s all the things from sleep methods to respiration methods to attaining a stream state. The flying drone merely offers a visible illustration of what’s happening.

“I believe I maintain the report for the man who could make the drone fly the longest,” says Darcy Sharpe, who's hoping so as to add to Canada’s medal rely in Beijing.

Regardless of its title, stream state is just not a dreamy, meditative place; it’s extra of an easy focus, simply what’s required to handle concern and launch off a soar for a collection flips and spins seeking an Olympic medal.

“It hasn’t drastically modified any behaviours or the methods I do issues,” Sharpe says of working with Bertram. “However it offers me extra instruments to do what Ido higher.”

As athletes throughout all sports activities know, when the extent of competitors tightens, being just a bit higher in coaching and slightly extra constant when performing beneath strain can add as much as rather a lot.