high performance - The Schulich School of Engineering - University ...

Photo by David MollMAY THE ATHLETEWITH THE BESTEQUIPMENT WINBY DON MCSWINEYVICTORY OFTEN COMES DOWNTO THE SMALLEST DETAILS.NEW TECHNOLOGIES BECOMEINCREASINGLY IMPORTANT,AND CANADIAN ATHLETES ANDCOACHES ARE LOOKING TOSCIENCE TO HELP THEM CROSSTHAT FINISH LINE A BLINKBEFORE THE COMPETITION.When the rest of Canada began theVancouver 2010 countdown fouryears ago, engineers were already engagedin finding ways to help Canadian athletestrain more efficiently, more safely and insome cases, in finding ways of improvingperformance. It was a process that beganshortly after the disappointing 2002 SaltLake City Olympics.“Everyone knew that the equipment wewere competing with in 2002 in Salt LakeCity was inferior. Skates, skis, suits … ourequipment was simply not up to the levelbeing used by the rest of the world,” saysRoger Jackson, head of Canada’s ambitiousOwn the Podium project. Jackson isa former Olympian, former dean ofkinesiology at the University of Calgaryand lynchpin of the 1988 Calgary Olympics.Own the Podium has a simple mandate– to help Canadian athletes consistentlycompete with the world’s best. This entailsmany different strategies, but one of themost important is to make sure Canadauses cutting-edge science to stay currentwith the rest of the world and in thecase of a Schulich School of Engineeringgeomatics engineering project for AlpineCanada Alpin (ACA), to get way in front ofthe rest of the world.Alpine skiing is an intensely technicalsport that marries the best technologywith elite athletic performance. It’s alsoone of those sports where first place andlast place can come down to hundredthsof a second. Athletes reach speeds over150 km an hour and need to keep to anearly perfect ‘line’ to have any chance offinishing on the podium.“The perfect line,” explains biomechanicsresearcher Gerald Cole, “is the line thatallows a skier to come out of a turn in perfectposition to make the next turn.” GeraldCole, who works with the Schulich School ofEngineering and the Faculty of Kinesiologyat the University of Calgary, was brought inby ACA as a consultant to help them excelin areas of biomechanics and engineering.When ACA coaching staff brought upthe need for a viable GPS training device,Cole knew just where to turn – ProfessorGérard Lachapelle, Canada Research Chair/Informatics Circle of Research Excellence(iCORE) Chair in Wireless Location, andhis world-leading research group at theSchulich School of Engineering. Under ajoint sponsorship of the Schulich School,iCORE, Own the Podium and Calgary-basedNovAtel Inc. – which provided some of thehigh performance hardware – his team wenton to solve the problem in fall 2006. >>SCHULICH10 ENGINEERSCHULICH 11 ENGINEER