[Music]
swimming in australia is the most
successful olympic sport australia in an
olympic term is the second best nation
that's ever been behind the usa
we're really lucky in australia that the
australian sporting system right back
from 1982 the government
funded the australian institute of sport
that was where sports science in
australia was really born and so
australia in sport in general has always
been at the forefront of science
i guess the ultimate piece of analysis
that we look at is always the race
that's the basis of where the evidence
starts is what's actually done in the
competition pool and using that race
analysis to analyze the performance
physiological testing will give you
evidence whether it be
blood lactates or gas analysis or
sleep monitoring evidence on how the
athlete is responding to training
programs that the coaches are using so
it's about pulling that training
evidence and combining it with the race
analysis and looking for opportunities
to improve certain parts of the race and
then how you might do that in training
so the difference we have now from 20
years ago is that we can capture all
eight finalists from olympic games and
world championships and then we can
dovetail that on some of the best
australians we can see
what we need to do in terms of our
overall skills whether that starts and
turns added together but we can also get
the stroke mechanics whether that be how
they pace the race their distance from
stroke their stroke rate that bit is the
key that tells us then the the kind of
priority and the focus area when the
coaches come back into training it's
about understanding what's important for
that individual and trying to develop
more of an individualised bespoke
program around the individual swimmer a
really good example is a coach will be
running a training session and they'll
be talking to their swimmers and taking
times and stroke rates on their
stopwatches and for example they might
be timing a turn and then they'll go
what's the fastest turn in the world at
the moment for the 100 meter backstroke
and you need to be able to answer that
straight away
we started working with aws 18 months
ago
the high performance unit at swimming
australia works with aws in the data
space
the problem was that we had a lot of
data in swimming and we knew
that there was great insight and
knowledge in that data but we weren't
maximizing that with the help of the
solutions architects at aws were able to
put all their data in one place and now
the data is starting to talk to each
other
the potential for the data is huge it's
really mind-blowing i think we've laid
the concrete slab by building our data
lake with aws
we're just starting to now dip our toes
in full porter skis the pun
with yeah machine learning and ai
and what that'll do is hopefully tell us
things that we didn't even know
potentially for example like the
trajectory of a swimmer so if you took
the 100 meter freestyle looking at not
just that athlete but looking at
athletes that have been successful over
multiple years in that event and looking
at what made them successful and then
being able to use machine learning or ai
to then go okay well where does this
athlete fit on that trajectory so you're
potentially then looking at performance
trajectory and going okay with this
athlete's above the curve or whether
they're below the curve but they're
showing other signs and characteristics
and they'll
allow us to continue to develop that
learning but the machine will do a lot
of that learning for us rather than for
us as scientists to have to sit there
for hours and days and weeks and months
and years plugging in data points the
machine will be able to do that at such
a more rapid rate
it's 100
predictive so we're looking at what's it
going to take to win not just in tokyo
in 2021 but what's it going to take to
win in paris in 2024 and then 2032 in
brisbane
we're definitely competitive and world
leading in the work that we do in the
sport science area
it's kind of like a race to the moon you
know like you're always trying to stay
one step ahead because at the end of the
day it's how you use that information
and how the coaches understand it and
can apply it that's the most important
thing
and information data and knowledge is
power
[Applause]
[Music]
you