Technology of sport

Olympic notebook: Canada's Brodeur talks hockey, tech

VANCOUVER--Team Canada goalie Martin Brodeur was in Robson Square on Friday at a GE event ostensibly to talk about health and health technology in sports, but naturally the talk quickly turned to hockey and, specifically, the incredible pressure on the host nation's team to win gold.

"I think it's just normal," Brodeur told reporters. "People have been waiting for a lot of years to have these Olympics in Canada...Expectations are high and we definitely are looking forward to the challenge. It's what we do in Canada--we play hockey."

Brodeur, for those not … Read more

Canada's high-tech effort to 'own the podium'

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--Determined to make a better medal showing on its home soil, Canada has spent millions of dollars over the past several years in an effort to "own the podium."

And a big part of that effort has been a "top secret" program that aims to give the country's athletes better uniforms and better equipment, as well as access to technology that can help them improve their performance.

In the past five years, Canada has invested $8 million exploring anything that might give their athletes a boost, including better materials for uniforms, putting athletes … Read more

Olympic notebook: Meet the Games' youngest reporter

VANCOUVER--Working in the unofficial press center at Robson Square, Brennan LaBrie stands out a bit.

It's not just that he's blogging, doing podcasts, and posting to Twitter. It's that he's 10 years old. LaBrie was one of a dozen winners of a Time magazine "kid reporter" contest. But LaBrie was already an experienced reporter before landing the Time gig. He runs a handwritten neighborhood weekly that has roughly 250 subscribers paying 25 cents an issue.

Because his hometown, Port Townsend, Wash., is so close, the folks at Time suggested he come to the Games … Read more

Olympic notebook: The glitchy Games

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--As the sun rises into a bright blue sky here, it's hard to imagine a more picturesque setting for the Olympics. But the sun is just one of many problems that have marred the start of these Winter Games.

Even before the Games began, the weather had caused problems for course builders at Cypress Mountain, sending them scrambling to use straw and other innovations to make up for a lack of snow. Since then, organizers have had to cancel thousands of general-admission tickets at Cypress, saying weekend rains had made the standing areas unsafe.

On the day … Read more

Top U.S. bobsledder is a gold medal nerd

WHISTLER, British Columbia--Team USA is pinning its bobsled hopes on a geek.

Luckily, Steven Holcomb is a reigning world champion in the four-man bobsled, in addition to being a big computer nerd.

"I'm working on my computer science degree," Holcomb said in an interview with CNET. "I'm a huge gamer. I'm A+ certified and a Microsoft Certified Professional."

Computers have taken a back seat in recent years, though, as Holcomb has been driving bobsleds full time on the World Cup and international circuit.

Still, though, Holcomb is never too far from technology. He … Read more

Olympic notebook: A fresh look at the medal table

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--Although most of the attention on Olympic national medal totals focuses on the top of the aggregate standings, one company is offering a different option.

Radnor, Pa.-based QlikTech has an application that breaks things down along other means, adjusting for things like population and gross domestic product, to offer another measure of performance. While the U.S. tops the aggregate medal chart, for example, Norway is most impressive, when adjusted for GDP or population.

The application, which is available on QlikTech's Web site, also offers a weighted medal count (giving four points for a gold, two … Read more

Wiring the Vancouver Olympics

Organizers of the Vancouver Olympics had a pretty simple message to the technology providers creating the massive network to power this month's Winter Games.

"We demand that this is flawless," Chief Information Office Ward Chapin said in a briefing with reporters this week. To meet that goal, Chapin said, there has been a tremendous amount of redundancy built into the network as well as thousands upon thousands of hours of testing.

"I would not want to be the individual that had to go up to Hans the ski jumper after his world record jump and say '… Read more

Olympic snow still in short supply at Cypress

With the Winter Games in Vancouver only a few days away, a continued topic of conversation among Olympic watchers remains the snow, or lack thereof, at Cypress Mountain.

Although Whistler, home to most of the skiing events, has plenty of the white powder, organizers have been scrambling to get Cypress Mountain ready to host events such as moguls and snowboarding. The enemy has been an unusually warm winter, combined with rain that has further eroded the snow at lower elevations at the venue.

In addition to continuing to shuttle in snow via trucks and helicopters, event planners have now shortened … Read more

Olympics and tech: 'No room to fail' (Q&A)

There are numerous companies whose electronics gear goes into making the Olympics happen, but the responsibility for pulling all that technology together rests largely on the shoulders of Magnus Alvarsson.

As lead integrator for tech firm Atos Origin, Alvarsson is in charge of making sure all the PCs, phones, servers, and other gear are up and running so that the judges can judge, the athletes can perform, and the media can write about it all. Their systems handle, among other things, volunteer coordination, reporting of medical issues, and the accreditation of athletes and other Games personnel.

"The world is … Read more