Elite athletes' bodies are being mapped by AI from head to heart to diet.

• Microsoft has partnered with Olympic hopefuls, including U.S. Surfing, to use AI tools and technology in their journey to the 2024 Paris Games.
• With the help of Amazon Web Services, the NFL is utilizing AI and computer vision to create a "digital athlete" profile.
• Tata Consultancy Services is utilizing digital twin technology to create a virtual replica of marathoner Des Linden's heart, which will aid her in her upcoming trials for the 2024 Olympic marathon in February.

Elite athletes have been trained by gymnastes since the inception of the Ancient Olympic Games, where these experts provided guidance on technique, nutrition, and strength conditioning for runners, chariot racers, wrestlers, and boxers.

Today's Olympians are preparing for the Paris Games, and their trainers and coaches are following the same Olympic motto of "faster, higher, stronger." However, they now have the advantage of millennia of technological advancements, which have been enhanced with artificial intelligence.

U.S. Soccer trainers and coaches are utilizing AI technology to instantly identify and track player movements and ball positions. With a suite of software tools, they can analyze human performance metrics such as body position, velocity, speed, and timing in real-time on the field.

With the help of AI and computer vision, we track and analyze personalized data from various sports to identify an athlete's strengths and weaknesses in movement. This information allows us to create data-driven training and competition plans that improve performance and health, as stated by Mike Levine, director of performance innovation business operations at the USOPC in Colorado Springs, home to a high-tech Olympic training center.

Big tech companies provide AI expertise to the USOPC and NGBs, while also collaborating with in-house experts in bleeding-edge technology development, data analytics, and sports sciences and medicine. For example, USA Surfing staff has partnered with engineers to analyze digital videos of surfers and use AI to analyze data on body movement, surfboards, and waves to determine areas for improvement.

Levine stated that this work reduces coaches and staff's video tagging time by hundreds of hours, enhances the collection of more and better data, and provides analysts and coaches with more time to analyze the data and apply the insights to real-life training and performance.

Creating 3-D models of athletes’ bodies with Intel technology

Computer vision systems, utilizing AI technology, are capable of replicating the human brain's object recognition and classification abilities. A commercial application, 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT), was developed by the Olympic Technology Group and is now being used by trainers in various sports. 3DAT employs sensor-less motion capture and digital video to create three-dimensional models of an athlete's entire body, which trainers use to optimize performance.

Jonathan Lee, the senior director of sports technology at Intel, stated that they can detect movements of athletes and things that are not visible to the human eye through the development of 3DAT. Currently, he is the chief product officer at ai.io, a London-based sports tech company that recently acquired the system from Intel.

Exos, a coaching company in Scottsdale, Arizona, utilizes 3DAT technology to evaluate college football players during the National Football League's annual scouting combine. The company employs digital video cameras mounted on timing gates to capture data on a runner's 40-yard dash, including their acceleration, velocity, and body angle of attack.

Before a player's next sprint, a trainer might provide tips on how to improve posture, such as being more upright or leaning forward, based on a personalized skeletal model constructed instantly from data.

The NFL-Amazon digital player and concussion-risk tracking

The NFL is utilizing AI and computer vision technology to improve its Digital Athlete program, which was developed in partnership with beginning in 2019. This program provides a comprehensive view of each NFL player's experience by analyzing data from their training and game activity, which is captured by sensors and tags in equipment and hours of video from cameras in stadiums. Computer vision and machine learning systems track speed, collisions, blocks, and tackles. This data is shared with clubs, allowing teams to accurately understand what players need to do to stay healthy, recover quickly, and perform at their best.

Jennifer Langton, NFL senior vice president of health and safety innovation, stated that AI and machine learning are the foundation of the program. The program can analyze a significant amount of data and automatically generate insights into which players may benefit from modifying their training or recovery routines, a process that was previously manual and time-consuming.

The AI was trained to recognize trauma by being exposed to and analyzing digital video images of helmets from various angles, according to Langton. It then cross-referenced visual information from statistical data to determine which player was wearing which helmet. With practice, the AI became increasingly accurate and efficient in identifying and categorizing head collisions throughout a game and a season. This allowed trainers and coaches to identify players who needed to reduce their workloads and those who could handle a more intense workout.

The Digital Athlete program, initially launched as a pilot with four NFL teams last year, is now accessible to all 32 franchises through a dedicated online portal. This portal offers teams daily training loads, risk-mitigation information, league-wide injury trends, and benchmarks that were previously unavailable. Langton stated that the NFL will evaluate the program's tangible results at the end of the season by assessing the data.

‘The next big thing’: Twin hearts of elite athletes

A digital twin technology is being utilized in the training of elite athletes, including a virtual replica of Des Linden's heart, produced by Tata Consultancy Services in partnership with French tech developer Dassault Systèmes.

Dr. Srinivasan Jayaraman, a principal scientist at TCS, stated that Linden's avatar organ, created using AI-analyzed data from CT scans and MRIs, can simulate her heart rate, blood flow, and oxygen levels. This provides instant feedback that can be interpreted to adjust her training and competition. Instead of having her run on a treadmill or outdoors, TCS can run simulations using her digital twin heart to vary different cardiovascular parameters and fine-tune her training.

Linden has experience with sports technology, from online message boards to high-tech running shoes. She believes that the digital twin heart will be the next big thing in sports tech. By mapping out her training and seeing the gains and drawbacks ahead of time, she can work smarter, not harder.

Linden, with the help of her digital twin heart, will be preparing for the 2024 Olympic marathon trials in February. Qualifying for her third Team USA slot will be a challenging task, but she is determined to give it a try.

AI and sports training diets

AI is used in planning the diet and nutrition of Olympic athletes through an AI-powered app called Notemeal, which simplifies the labor-intensive, hand-written task of designing meal plans for about 300 athletes with USA Track and Field and USA Swimming. Alicia Glass, a senior sports dietician for the USOPC, designs these meal plans using data collected from 37 dieticians from professional sports teams and organizations to generate individualized meal plans for the best of the best athletes in the world.

Glass emphasizes the importance of her professional skills in comprehending the unique events, training regimens, and goals of each athlete, as well as their genetic makeup, body mass, and metabolic rate. Even athletes competing in the same events require personalized meal plans, she stated. "Notemeal simplifies this process," she added.

The app on my phone sends a text to the athletes, notifying them that a meal has been created for them. Additionally, the app uses AI to create personalized shopping lists and recipes for them.

While Glass may not assert that high-tech dietary planning will secure medals in the upcoming Paris Olympics, many athletes acknowledge that it enhances their lifestyle by increasing their awareness of their individual nutritional requirements.

Linden believes that personalizing training and avoiding overworking are crucial to maximizing gains for elite athletes as technology continues to play a larger role in their lives.