(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Some of the most advanced sports technology on the planet isn’t being created at a shoe lab in Oregon or a moonshot factory inside Google. It’s coming out of a guy’s house.
Mounir Zok, the biomedical engineer in charge of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s tech and innovation, brainstorms products and training aids from his home in Cupertino, Calif. Together with his team of engineers and specialists, he’s produced, among other training gear, a set of connected glasses for the U.S. women’s cycling pursuit team that projects performance data directly onto lenses. “Just like a butterfly can never be a caterpillar again,” Zok says, “once an athlete starts using technology to peak when she wants to peak, limit injuries, and maximize performance, she can never go back to just intuitive training.” The team used them to prepare for the 2016 Summer Games and won a silver medal.
Zok was born in Lebanon and studied physics at the American University of Beirut. He earned a doctorate in biomedical engineering from the University of Bologna and was working on a couple of tech startups, including one with various Italian Olympic teams, when the USOC called. Zok jumped at the job offer, moving his family in 2012 to the USOC’s home in Colorado Springs. Four years later he was named director for technology and innovation and relocated to Silicon Valley. The move brought him closer to people who speak his language; in interviews he references the IoT (internet of things) far more than the IOC (International Olympic Committee).
For the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, Zok and his team built virtual-reality ski-training software and analyzed different ice types to determine which kind of skate blade is fastest in varying conditions. They also developed a skin suit that doubles as a full-body sensor, helping athletes get a more holistic view of their heart rate, skin conductance, speed, and muscle fatigue.
That level of wearable tech is likely years away from being available to consumers. Zok won’t say who his partners were in the development process or even which athletes are using the suits; any hints might tip off Olympic engineers in other countries, erasing the USOC’s advantage. “I call it the 1 percent question,” he says. “Olympic events typically come down to a 1 percent advantage. So what’s the one question that, if we can provide an answer, will give our athletes that 1 percent edge?”
To contact the author of this story: Eben Novy-Williams in New York at enovywilliam@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jillian Goodman at jgoodman74@bloomberg.net.
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