Team Pursuit is a track cycling event held in velodromes and a popular sport of the Summer Olympics. It involves the use of strategies to minimize the overall time a team of cyclists requires to complete a 4-kilometer dash. These strategies include speed pacing and optimal rider recovery swapping to prevent the team from losing momentum.
Team Pursuit cycling is the ultimate team sport and relies on a team of four riders to work perfectly in sync to optimize speed and efficiency. The rider in the front is asked to expend about 30 percent more energy than the rest of the riders because their job is to break the wind for the riders in the back.
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As the front rider begins to wear down they will pull out of formation and drop to the back of the team while the other three riders move forward. The exchange is extremely important because if the rider who is moving from front to back doesn’t execute it perfectly they can affect the pace of the team. The pacing strategies that are used in Team Pursuit are based around finding the optimal way for riders to expend their energy and maximizing their recovery when they are not pulling. Every rider has a fixed amount of energy that they have to burn during the race, which is called W-Prime, the ultimate goal for riders is to use every bit of energy by the end of the race.
While today the bikes are fitted with power meters to gather power watts, cadence, and speed of the riders, the amount of time to upload the data and then link the data into insights hinders their ability to provide immediate feedback to the athletes. It can take days or weeks to pull together the data for feedback in the form of a digestible spreadsheet.
With the 2016 Rio Olympics right around the corner, Team USA is taking their training and preparation to a new level. With the help of IBM, the team is now able to train smarter while expediting recovery and maximizing efficiency.
“Anything you can do to be able to give you an edge is what you’re looking for here, and it’s all around technique and aerodynamics,” said IBM jStart Technical Engagement Manager, Randy Wilcox.
The IBM jStart team has partnered with Team USA to help them collect training and recovery information in real time through the cloud. For the riders and coaches, being able to access rider information in real time during training and within moments of finishing training is something that has never been possible. The jStart team is making all of this possible by creating the Coaches Training App, which will offer the coaches two separate dashboards. The Summary Dashboard and the Real Time Dashboard.
The Summary Dashboard was created to show data collected during practice that is shown to riders post-practice to give them a Power Data Summary, Lap Time Data, and Biometric Data. The Real Time Dashboard collects data such as Rider Start Watts, a Pull Watt Graph, Rider Cadence, W-Prime, and Rider Power.
The dashboards that IBM have created aggregate the data in a way that makes it extremely easy to read for both riders and coaches, while still providing the precision that they need to improve. According to IBM jStart IT Architect and Managing Consultant, Ted Morris, the dashboards will help coaches measure variance. This combined with coach’s video will allow them to identify changes to the aerodynamic behavior of the rider that can help improve the rider’s time.
But that’s not all that the jStart team has worked on to give the USA Women’s team an advantage. They have also teamed up with BSX Insight to equip each rider with sensor that keeps track of their muscle oxygenation (SmO2) during the training session. Being able to see the rider’s muscle oxygenation allows coaches to tell if the rider has recovered sufficiently to continue training.
The jStart team has also partnered with Solos to give riders high performance glasses that provider riders with real time information that they can see. For example, a rider is able to see the number of matches burned during a race or what percent of their w-prime has been burned. 
These technologies are hoping to put Team USA ahead of the competition when it comes to both training and recovery. The team is hoping that with the help from IBM they will be able to ride past the competition in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio and be on the winning side of those crucial fractions of a second.