Genetic information will soon be a standard part of sports, used to customize training, personalize nutrition, and even to identify talent. Over the last few years, DNA analysis firm Athletigen and elite track and field training facility Altis have been working together to explore and develop that future.

Through collaboration, both Altis and Athletigen have been hoping to gain a head start in this race, learning what genetic information is important and how to convert that into actionable insights. A new product launched by Athletigen on Tuesday, the Altis Sport Performance Report, is hoping to bring some of what the two organizations have learned to consumers, both pro and amateur.

Altis’s athletes have been the lab rats that Athletigen can study, a population of highly fit individuals who closely follow training and nutrition protocols, generating accurate data that give context to the results from genetic testing. John Godina, a three-time Olympian who founded Altis in 2013, describes his organization as something between a training center and an educational and research institute. “[Altis] is a great science lab,” he said. “It gives us a chance to do stuff in a controlled environment that can benefit all kinds of different people.”

(read more…)

Anil Kumble, aka “Jumbo,” is arguably the best bowler to have ever played for India. The right-handed, leg-spin bowler’s 619 wickets in his 18-year international Test cricket career ranks him third all-time in the world, and he is one of only two players to have taken all 10 wickets in a single Test match innings. He was awarded India’s fourth highest civilian honor, Padma Shri, in 2005, and inducted into the International Cricket Council’s Hall of Fame in 2015.

After fully retiring from playing in 2011, Kumble was named chief mentor to the Indian Premier League’s Royal Challengers Bangalore team, and later held the same role with the Mumbai Indians. He also served as coach of the Indian cricket team from 2016 to 2017, and has chaired the ICC’s cricket committee since 2012.

Kumble has recently been working with Microsoft to develop a sticker-like sensor, called Power Bat, that can be attached to a cricket bat to determine various metrics about hitting power and technique. The device, produced by Kumble’s company Spektacom, made its debut in the Tamil Nadu Premier League this summer and might soon be used in bigger competitions, such as the IPL.

(read more…)

There was something strange lurking in the basement of Sam Miller’s childhood home in the 1990s. It wasn’t exactly a monster, but a weird mechanical contraption. As a visiting scientist at MIT, Sam’s father, Larry, had been trying to understand and replicate human movement. The apparatus was the fruit of that unfulfilled quest.

“He had this idea while he was at MIT, and then he went off on his own and tried to develop it,” Miller, 32, said, “and was doing it in the basement of my house growing up. Me and everyone that I knew—family, friends—always knew about what we called ‘The Machine.’”

“And it effectively did nothing.”

(read more…)

Alison Tetrick is a pro road cyclist and a star of the growing gravel racing scene. In 2017, she racked up wins at Dirty Kanza (a 200-mile gravel race near Emporia, Kans.), Gravel Worlds (a 150-mile race near Lincoln, Neb.), and The Queen’s Stage Race (a three-day event near Ketchum, Idaho). She won Gravel Worlds a second time this summer.

She has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, with a focus in molecular biology, and, before turning pro, Tetrick worked in a molecular pharmacology lab at biopharma giant Amgen. Her response to a crash in 2010 that left her with a traumatic brain injury and broken pelvis was to go out and gain her master’s degree in clinical psychology.

(read more…)

A week ago, 50 miles into a 206-mile endurance bike race on unpaved roads through the countryside around Emporia in Eastern Kansas, the derailleur on my bike failed. The mechanism that shifts the chain up and down gears on the cassette twisted and folded itself into the spokes of the rear wheel. My bike seized up, and I jumped off just in time to avoid crashing.

The surest way to understand the importance of any piece of technology is when that tech breaks. A functioning derailleur is a beautifully crafted contraption made of springs and arms and small cogs. Not only does it push the chain sideways to move between the gears, but as it does that it also extends outwards to adjust the chain length. When the derailleur breaks, the bike breaks.

The race I was competing in, Dirty Kanza, is well known for wearing down humans and bikes. When 70 percent of riders finish, that’s considered a good year. In 2016, following an early morning, pre-race thunderstorm, sticky mud and sharp gravel wrecked dozens of derailleurs and chains just a couple of miles in.

(read more…)

Being an astronaut means being the ultimate crossover between pro athlete and pro mathlete. Before joining NASA’s Astronaut Corps, Mae Jemison studied chemical engineering at Stanford University, then got her medical degree from Cornell. As she prepared for the 1992 STS-47 shuttle mission, she had to train her body for both the extreme accelerations of launch and the zero gravity of spaceflight. On Wednesday, at the Beyond Innovation conference at Levi’s Stadium, Jemison talked about how the worlds of sports and science education interact.

The Beyond Innovation meeting was organized by Beyond Sport and the 49ers Foundation to bring together experts and educators from across the science, technology, engineering, and math education ecosystem.

“Kids are born interested in science. I don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t interested in how the world works,” Jemison said. But the important part is what happens as children turn into adults, she explained, “whether you continue to go into it as a profession.”

(read more…)

On Tuesday, the San Francisco 49ers Foundation hosted 47 teens at a mini-hackathon at Levi’s Stadium. The students, who ranged from eighth through 10th grade, were given three hours to come up with a way for the 49ers to attract new audiences to Levi’s, turning non-fans into the Faithful.

The event was a lead-in to the Beyond Innovation conference hosted by the 49ers and Beyond Sport on Wednesday. The conference itself focuses on how sports can be used to support science, technology, engineering, and math education. And all of the students participating are part of the 49ers STEM Leadership Institute, which currently works with 240 kids spread across nearby Cabrillo Middle School and Santa Clara High School.

Jennifer Lee, program director of the institute, explained that its focus mixes empowering the students’ interests in STEM with empowering them with leadership and critical thinking skills. “We teach them the design thinking cycle,” Lee said, “and really trying to train them on not limiting themselves to what might be the ‘right’ answer.”

(read more…)

Caster Semenya’s career might soon be over. The International Association of Athletics Federations has announced new eligibility rules for women’s competitions, affecting running races between 400 meters and one mile. The regulations, which place limits on natural testosterone levels and androgen sensitivity, will come into effect on Nov. 1, and are expected to significantly impact athletes like Semenya who do not seem to fit neatly within the binary classification of male and female.

Semenya burst onto the international circuit as a South African 17-year-old in 2008, winning the 800-meter track races at both the World Junior Championships and Commonwealth Youth Games. By 2009 both Semenya and the IAAF were embroiled in controversy after the organization had compelled her to take a sex verification test amid rumors that she may be intersex. Her world championship title, won that August, seemed in jeopardy.

South Africans broadly came out in support of Semenya. “We wish to register our displeasure at the manner in which Ms. Semenya has been treated,” said South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma in August 2009. “They’re not going to remove the gold medal. She won it,” he added. In an interview for the South African magazine YOU a month later, Semenya said “God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”

(read more…)