Swimming Australia targets the top of the medal tally with Mantel support

While the recent Ashes series may have proven to be a dud, another fierce international sporting rivalry has been heating up in recent times between the Australian and US swimming teams.

The US has pipped Australia by just one gold in each of the past two major international meets, the 2024 Paris Olympics and last year’s World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, and will have home-pool advantage when the LA Olympics rolls around in 2028.

But the Dolphins may have a secret weapon up their togs; advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, with tech consultancy Mantel Group brought in to help Swimming Australia revolutionise its training regime in an effort to reach the top of the medal tally.

Until now, the sports body had been deploying its pioneering advanced analytics program for competitions alone, with the disjointed nature of individual daily training taking place across Australia a more difficult proposition to tap, albeit one rich with vast amounts of latent data and potential insights. Identifying this gap as the next frontier, Swimming Australia called in Mantel.

AI-powered insights
Since then, a team of Mantel engineers and data experts have been embedded and working alongside AWS to build Swimming Australia’s AI-powered ‘Training Insights’ platform in its bid to become the ‘Formula 1 of swimming’, where, as the likes of James Magnussen might attest after missing out on freestyle gold by one-hundredth of a second, even the tiniest of a fraction counts.

Previously having to rely on a stopwatch and the naked eye, Australia’s elite swimming coaches can now turn to the poolside insights engine for deeper analysis and real-time updates during training sessions, with the system taking advantage on computer vision technology to simultaneously track multiple athletes in the pool to capture and deliver thousands of data points per second.

Think stroke rates and velocity, turn times, average and accelerated speeds, and countless other metrics automatically analysed by machine learning tools and instantly available as actionable insights. This allows precise technical adjustments to be made during a training session, the firm says, fundamentally changing the training dynamic and maximising time in the pool.

“We are proud to partner with Swimming Australia to drive innovation in high-performance swimming,” said Mantel’s principal AI consultant Jonathan Hardy. “Using the latest advances in machine learning and AI, we have enabled coaches and athletes to unlock incremental performance gains, and look forward to continuing our collaboration in the pursuit of Olympic gold.”

Mantel also emphasises that a major part of its engagement is in creating a long-term foundation for success by empowering Swimming Australia to accelerate its tech ambitions independently, with the firm taking a ‘one team’ approach and working alongside coaches and performance analysts to develop a scalable system through which they can continue to adapt and innovate into the future.

“Training Insights will accurately link what happens in the training pool to competition performance, enabling real-time feedback to coaches and athletes to identify trends, strengths, and opportunities for improvement,” said Jessica Corones, Swimming Australia’s general manager of performance support. “This moves us beyond observation to actual influence.”