So after a few weeks break from the Olympics the sporting world’s attention turns back to Rio for the Paralympics.
Athletes with disabilities have a beautiful synergism with the technology that enables them to compete. From a sports tech perspective, this means the athletes are working closely with sports engineers to create adaptive technology to maximise their abilities in the pursuit of excellence. For any technologist, this would be riveting enough, but add the adversity these athletes experience, and the awe-inspiring sporting performance they produce and you it’s clear to see why the Paralympics is so special.
We here at SABEL have been doing a bit of research with a few of our Aussie athletes who are competing over there. Recently we’ve been using our SABEL sense on Wheelchair athletes to track players in training and match like simulations, you can see the paper here and the infographic below sums up the research.
Great job to the Aussie rollers on starting their campaign with a win this morning over the Netherlands. All the best to the Dutch team through the rest of the competition, I know the guys from TU delft would be watching keenly as they are heavily involved in wheelchair basketball research.
If you are interested in reading a bit more about the influence of technology and engineering on the Paralympics, check out the Sports Engineering Special Issue: Technology for Disability Sport on the link here!
Looking forward to the next 10 days of competition and the inspiring stories that inevitably come from this marvellous event. Also a big congratulations to QAS superstar Carlee Beattie for taking out Griffith’s first bronze medal of the games in the long jump. Fingers crossed for a few more medals for our athletes.
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