Technology created at USP helped prepare the Brazilian judo team for the Paris Olympics
Software based on statistical models detects sports talents and enables the monitoring of athletes’ performance.
FAPESP Agency * – A technology that uses mathematics to detect sports talents developed at the Center for Applied Mathematical Sciences to Industry (CeMEAI) will be represented by athletes from the Brazilian Judo Confederation at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
CeMEAI is a FAPESP Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center (CEPID) based at the Institute of Mathematical and Computer Sciences of the University of São Paulo (ICMC-USP), in São Carlos.
The software, called iSports, is based on statistical models. It was designed to be a kind of sports scout, initially applied to football. The program performs tests and stores physical and technical results, generating graphs, tables and parameters that allow sports professionals to analyse and interpret the data, being a tool to help check the performance of athletes.
“iSports can be used to identify, in a more objective way, athletes who perform above average within a group and, thus, discover talents,” explains one of the creators of the virtual tool, Francisco Louzada Neto, professor at ICMC-USP and Technology Transfer Coordinator at CeMEAI.
The project caught the attention of Brazilian sports leaders from other sports. In 2020, iSports Judo was born, with adaptations of the variables collected for the analysis of the athletes.
The interest arose from Leandro Carlos Mazzei, Professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and one of those responsible for applying the research at the Brazilian Judo Confederation. The work was so successful that, in 2022, it received the prize (R$ 15 thousand) for Sports Innovation at the Brazilian Olympic Congress. One of the authors won the opportunity to experience the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Mazzei will travel with the ambassadors of the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) to the competition. “The tool helped to accompany some athletes who are in Paris representing Brazilian judo,” explains the professor.
According to Mazzei, iSports have also contributed to improved performance data, including strength, speed and endurance tests.
“CeMEAI has adapted the software very well to the needs of judo and has assembled a multidisciplinary team of professionals. We will continue to use the technology because, at the end of the competition cycle in Paris, we will already be thinking about Los Angeles. We know that the tool has all the conditions to contribute to other modalities and to the technological evolution of Brazilian sport,” says Mazzei.
Louzada recalls that the application of the software demonstrates the importance of developing academic products aimed at the community. “This feedback also gives us great encouragement to continue our fight to offer intelligence to national entities that regulate sport and that fight for a quality sport that can be measured accurately,” he concludes.
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