“We’re not at the stage of Zoe’s career where we’re flipping over big rocks. It’s now, ‘Where can we find hundredths of a second to make the final?’”
Zoe Hobbs’ coach, James Mortimer, is speaking to the Herald from a New Zealand-Australia-South Africa training base in Montpellier about the fine margins that could decide whether New Zealand’s fastest woman makes the 100m final - or even breaks into the medals.
The Kiwi sprinter was just 0.01 seconds shy of a bronze at the World Athletics Indoor Championships 60m final earlier this year.
In the 100m dash in Paris, the margins could be even tighter.
Mortimer says, broadly speaking, the top half of the field likely to make the final have been running the same times, while the bottom half have been improving. “Even finding thousandths of a second could make the difference,” he says.
Artificial intelligence sports technology, created by Austin, Texas-based VueMotion Labs, could prove the tool that helps the Kiwi sprinter onto the podium.
VueMotion’s app captures granular data on Hobbs’ running mechanics – step length, frequency, ground contact time, forces, horizontal movement, speed, split times and more. It generates a visual “kinogram” that her coach can view, instantly seeing areas to improve like foot strike or hip rotation.
With this accurate biomechanical data, coaches like Mortimer can understand an athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, and use that information to improve the quality of their movement – positively impacting their health and performance.
Using data for track-and-field is nothing new, but Mortimer - a former World Championships and Commonwealth Games hurdler, who has also coached Portia Bing, and Liam Malone to international medals - says VueMotion means more instant, DIY analysis and less reliance on waiting for number-crunching from outside experts.
“You don’t have to sift through the data. It’s broken down quite nicely and it’s easy to understand - and it’s a lot quicker,” Mortimer says.
He can spot an issue like asymmetry of stride length, but VueMotion can confirm it to fine margins, and give detailed feedback on whether changes in technique are working.
The technology is powered by AWS services like S3 to store and process videos and visualisations, delivering analytics and insights that help athletes tweak their performance.
VueMotion also plans to leverage Amazon QuickSight to provide intelligent, visual dashboards that empowers coaches and athletes to engage with and analyse the biomechanical data from a user-friendly interface, the firm says.
VueMotion is also planning to experiment with generative AI through Amazon Bedrock for injury prevention and rehab insights, chief executive Ryan Talbot says.
AWS global sports head Paul Devlin says, “At AWS, we’re helping to pioneer the future of sports performance around the world with advanced cloud technology.
“Our data analytics capabilities, now enhanced by generative AI, empower sports coaches and performance staff to use real-time insights and predictive analytics, enabling them to innovate training methods and find those crucial small margins that make all the difference in achieving athletic excellence,” he added.
“It’s great to see VueMotion leading the way in running analysis and we’re seeing firsthand how these innovations can elevate athletes to new levels.” Devlin says.
“VueMotion’s cutting-edge computer vision, AI machine learning technology, supported by AWS cloud infrastructure, helps fine-tune elite sports performance by giving athletes, coaches, and teams a better understanding of the finer details of movement,” Talbot says.
“This provides valuable insights for improving performance and injury prevention. We’re thrilled to see our technology being leveraged by top athletes such as Olympic 100m specialist, Zoe Hobbs, and wish her the best of luck.”
Hobbs will shortly relocate from Montpellier to Paris, where she will compete on Friday in the 100m heats. Exact timing and lineups for each race have to be announced, but the heats will screen on Sky, Gold Sport and the Herald liveblog from 10.50pm NZT.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
- NZ Herald