How Olympic athletes use machine learning and data analysis to reach peak performance levels

For the first time ever, Ireland will have a field hockey team participating in the Summer Olympics. To make sure its athletes are performing at the highest level, the national team is getting some help from an Ireland-based startup that develops biometric measurement technology to identify players at risk for injury. Kitman Labs, based in Dublin with offices in Silicon Valley, is working with both the Irish national field hockey team and the South African rugby team as they compete in this month's Summer Olympics. The company's "Athlete Optimization System" analyzes athlete data collected from multiple systems including wearable trackers that show workload information and other data related to sleep, hydration, diet, mood, stress, and perceived muscle soreness. Coaches can look at the analytics to help drive decision-making related to the amount of training an athlete should be doing.