Established in 1997 by Royal Charter and funded by a mix of Exchequer and Lottery income, UK Sport works in partnership with British sports councils and other agencies to lead sport development in the UK to world success. Its primary goal is to support and deliver UK success at the Olympics and Paralympics.
"We do not work with every sport. Such sport innovation is seen as the last piece of the performance jigsaw for us, so we must have talented athletes, maybe the top in the world, before we can really provide them with our solutions," said UK Sport's Research and Innovation Consultant, Dr Scott Drawer.
All of UK Sport's work is done by finding the very best people in the UK and across the world to help provide these solutions to sport. So the job of the UK sport is to act as the bridge between the very best expertise in the world and sport.
A lot of other people do benefit from the knowledge and development UK Sport works on, but its solutions are always delivered to the best athletes who can compete in the Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing in 2008, and hopefully in London in 2012. It is always with the elite group because they are the ones that matter most.
"A good way to look at what we do is equivalent to Formula One team, or maybe the American Cup team. It is not university-academic driven, and it is driven by the need to go fast, and find ways to solve the solutions," noted Dr. Drawer.
The major areas UK Sport works in are in equipment and accessories for athletes. It has some of its multiple medal-winning sports such as cycling, sailing, rowing, big pieces of equipment, which it looks to re-design, develop, so they can be faster.
The area that UK Sport works in is called coaching technology. This is about providing coaches, scientists and medics with the tools to measure the aspects of performance with the athletes. This may include such things as the GPS devices, to measure the position of the athletes, measuring force, power, and speed by taking the lab to the field, and get the information back to the coach as quickly as possible. So they can adjust their training schemes.
Currently, UK Sport, as part of preparation for Beijing 2008, works with a number of sports, including cycling, sailing, rowing, canoeing, swimming as well as diving. In diving for example, it helped design and build water harnesses on a diving board in the roof of the diving course, which enables divers to learn difficult dives, and coach can maintain their safety.
In rowing a kind of instrumentation on the oars has been developed, which measures the force and speed of the boat, and send the information back to the coach.
In swimming the newly-developed software tool can capture video, and from the video coaches get the race analysis, for example, to look at the split time, time to turn, and UK Sport collects the data, with the coach to help look at areas that swimming can be improved.
In athletics, it has developed a measurement tool that tracks projectiles for throw event. When an athlete throws javelin, the tool can measure speed of release, angle of release and distance throw and it can provide the information instantly.
Another big area UK Sport works on is the training science, which focuses on training monitoring, nutrition strategies and recovery. That is to understand training processes and training inputs - how you train and when you train. It is about understanding how athletes load, and maximise their recovery. So the training can be much quicker and more efficient.
And the final area UK Sport works on is medical management. It is not only looked in a more effective way to treat injuries, but also the way to reduce injuries. And the last part of management is illness. UK Sport tries to avoid over-training and overload to prevent illness from occurring, especially during the wintertime in UK.
UK Sport works with a number of different people, sometimes with commercial companies, because the performance problems need to be delivered really really quickly. Sometimes it works with universities as well, probably because the best method to deliver its question requires long-term control investigation.
What UK Sport also does is to provide opportunities for scientists, medics and coaches to come up with ideas. Their programme, "Idea for Innovation" is to encourage university students who are passionate for sports to send in their innovative projects. With the project done for the Olympics and Paralympics, a lot of elite students have sent in their projects. UK Sport will give the winner 25,000 pounds, which can enable them to carry on their proposals. It pays for them to pursuit projects for a longer period of time.
"One of the things that is important to us is to recognize we do not know everything, and we believe our sport coaches and athletes also do not know everything. So we try to get other people to provide great ideas, which will be conducive to sports and athletes," added Dr. Drawer.
By People's Daily Online
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