Science in search of gold

According to Professor Steve Haake, director of the Centre for Sports Engineering Research (CSER) at Sheffield Hallam University, success at gold medal standard is not just one singular thing, but a combination of lots of little things together which makes the difference. Dave Brailsford, performance director at British Cycling has coined the phrase "The aggregation of marginal gains" to describe the approach of finding a 1 per cent margin for improvement in everything you do. UK Sport is the government body responsible for investing around £100m in Britain's best Olympic and Paralympic sports, with the aim of maximising success on a world stage. Some of that incremental gain will come through the intelligent use of technology and, as a UK Sport Innovation partner of the Olympics, the team at Sheffield Hallam CSER have trialled their new technology with over a dozen Olympic sports in the lead up to the games.