COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.- The Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center held its very first Olympic Media Day, showing off how Team USA is using cutting-edge technology to get ready for the Games.
Training for the Rio Olympics is taking a futuristic turn in 2016.
“We use lots and lots of wearable technology, we are beginning to venture into the smart fabrics and functional textiles area as well,” Mounir Zok, Director of Technology and Innovation for the USOC said.
One sport taking advantage of this high-tech gear is boxing. They use these sensors to help track their training progress.
“How many punches did they throw today, what was their time and what the maximum speed that they reached was,” Zok said.
But boxing is just one of many sports using this science. Olympic marathoners are using little patches like this one to focus on what’s going on in their bodies.
“That is not only collecting her sweat, but it tells us how much she is losing in her sweat in terms of the electrolytes particularly salt,” Randy Wilber, Senior Sports Physiologist at the USOC said.
However, not all of the technology can be seen from the outside.
“We had her ingest a little pill this morning, a little bit bigger than a size of an aspirin, and we can read and measure what her core temperature is doing,” Wilber said.
Because in the end, all of this information is helping the Olympic hopefuls do one thing.
“Team USA is in it to win it, and that’s what we are all about here,” Dr. Bill Moreau, Managing Director of Sports Medicine and Chief Medical Officers for 2016 Olympic Team said.
