In the Olympic arena, traditional big events, such as track and field, such as "three big balls", are very popular. But what we're going to talk to you about today is a very interesting project, a project that "you may know, but haven't gone into it before" ^__^.

■Also an athlete from the Olympic Games, the tall man on the left is a basketball player? Volleyball player? No no no! neither!

■Among the well-known sports, football, long-distance running and swimming have very high requirements on the lung capacity of athletes, but athletes in one sport generally have higher lung capacity!

The above two points all point to one project: rowing (including kayaking)!

Rowing is a typical "tall sports", here are a few sets of data to share with you:

●The height of male athletes in Olympic rowing is mostly 1.9 meters to 1.95 meters, while the height of female athletes is mostly 1.8 meters to 1.85 meters, and the athletes are required to have long hands and long legs! why? Because of the requirement of "long distance for work", only one paddle can go further!

●Professional rowers have a large lung capacity of more than 6L or even 7L, far exceeding the general level of football and track and field athletes! Because this is a very endurance-testing sport, you have to paddle with all your strength and sprint for two kilometers!

Rowing originated in England, and in the 17th century, boaters on the Thames often held rowing competitions. In 1715, to celebrate the coronation of the King of England, the first official rowing competition was held. In 1775, the United Kingdom formulated the rules of rowing competition, and in the same year, the rowing club system was introduced, which gradually became formalized.

In the 2nd Olympic Games in 1900, the rowing competition was officially held; in 1934, the International Rowing Federation stipulated that the length of the competition was 2000 meters straight, and the width of the river must allow at least 3 rowing boats to compete at the same time (the current The Olympic Games are 6 rowing boats at the same time). In the later period, women's competition was introduced, and the length of the track was also 2000 meters!

In terms of specific classification, rowing boats are actually divided into two types: "racing boats" and "kayaking". You can distinguish them as follows: rowing paddles are semi-fixed on the body of the boat and rowed back and forth. Boats can accommodate up to eight people; kayaks are fully hand-held paddles, which are usually double-ended, with the athlete waving and rowing.

In addition, rowing is also divided into 1 person, 2 person, 4 person and 8 person event, and then there is a distinction between single oars and double oars, and there is a difference between "with a helmsman and without a helmsman", and on this basis, also There are further breakdowns by athlete's age and weight.

●To say that rowing is a "high-level sport" has another meaning: compared with other sports, modern rowing has higher requirements. First of all, you must have an available river course, and the regular competition requires a 2000-meter straight track! Even in Europe, where rowing is relatively popular (with many rivers), this is not an easy resource. Moreover, with the improvement of sports protection, lifeboats must be followed, and there must be ambulance personnel, and a coaching team is also essential. Therefore, modern rowing is becoming more and more professional and competitive - although it is not something that ordinary people can participate in, it is more enjoyable to watch!

▲ The most exciting 8-person sculls event (the video part is the 2016 Olympic men's 8-person boat final). The world's best time is 5 minutes and 18 seconds (2000 meters), which is about 6.3 meters per second, or 22.7km per hour - only physical strength! Moreover, the 8-person rowing is a test of the players' coordination, including movement consistency and strength consistency. It is precisely because of this that it is known as the most competitive sports that tests teamwork, so that the Olympic Games has always had an "unwritten rule" that medals for 8-man boats are usually awarded by the President of the International Olympic Committee!

Here I would like to share with you some exciting news: Today, our Chinese national rowing team won the gold medal in the women's quadruple sculls at the Tokyo Olympics, and created a new world best result!

When it comes to the Chinese national rowing team, I have to talk about their performance in international competitions. In fact, Chinese rowing achieved good results in the 1980s, winning a lot of gold in various world-class events. But in the later period, with the efforts of other countries, we experienced a period of low ebb. Since 2019, the Chinese national rowing team has repeatedly achieved good results in various world competitions and won gold medals.

The improvement of the performance of the Chinese national rowing team is of course inseparable from various efforts. In addition to hard training (it is said that many athletes do not return home several times a year), there are also well-known international coaches joining in, and more importantly, A more efficient, reasonable and scientific method of physical fitness and skill training has been introduced - and here, we are going to mention a well-known saying, that is, "technology helps sports" !

Technology to help sports has never been an empty talk, and it is not just as simple as "several cameras that can move with athletes" and "real-time display of several offensive and defensive data". For example, the NBA introduced the concept of technological assistance very early. The player assists, rebounds, and scoring data displayed on the big screen in the stadium are only the most obvious and simplest presentation of technological assistance in NBA events. Every NBA team and even every player has technological means to support and serve. For example, which points on the court a player likes to throw, his take-off height, throwing angle, and the hit rate of various positions and heights, all have big data statistics and analysis. The Warriors' "three-point king" Curry has wearable devices and big data analysis services from Silicon Valley behind it for targeted three-point shooting training.

So, in the rowing project, what can technology help do specifically? Today, let's tell a story about the cooperation between China National Rowing Team and Dell!

In November 2019, Dell Technologies Group (hereinafter referred to as Dell), the world's leading IT infrastructure provider, signed a technical strategic cooperation with the China Rowing Association and the China Canoeing Association for the aquatic laboratory, with the goal of empowering the Chinese nation with technology. Preparation training for rowing and canoeing teams. Recently, an unveiling ceremony was held with the China Rowing Association, the China Kayaking Association, and the Human Sports Performance and Health Development Center (“PHD” for short) to jointly build the “Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Joint Laboratory”.

▲ The joint unveiling ceremony of big data and artificial intelligence

What exactly did Dell do for our country's rowing program?

In the training program of rowing athletes, although strength, work, lung capacity and other indicators have long been quantified, the accuracy of posture during rowing has not been precise and digital in the past, and more is based on the on-site guidance of the coach. Raise the point", "The back is too far forward, lean back"... But athletes can't see their posture during training, so correction is a bit blind, the problem is often repeated, and the correction efficiency is very low.

Therefore, Dell developed a set of intelligent training assistance system, which is a sports biomechanical analysis model based on artificial intelligence. It uses video to capture the training movements of athletes in real time. Combined with Dell's terminal, it makes real-time analysis and judgment, and corrects sports training. Variations in action angle, strength, and stability.

Um? Isn't camera motion capture a long time ago? Wasn't there a camera motion capture game a decade ago? Yes! But the system we're talking about is much more complicated: rowing a rowing boat isn't as simple as a torso without paddling, it's a full-body exercise, with seats that can move back and forth on a "track", while paddling In order to increase the stroke of the paddle (which is positively related to the distance and speed of a single rowing boat), it is still necessary to kick the legs, and the whole body is exerting force.

▲ The members of the national rowing team performed a "slow motion interpretation" of rowing for us on the rowing training machine (the professional name is "dynamometer").

And this motion capture recognition system is not only as simple as recognizing the athlete's hand, but also recognizes the angle of the hand, the angle of the elbow, the angle of the forearm, the angle of the torso, the angle of the hip, and the angle of the knee so finely, and It should be divided into two positions: "the most front" and "the most distant" - not only the angle should be displayed in real time, but also posture prompts and suggestions should be given at the same time, so that athletes can see the problem of their training posture in real time and get real-time reminders .

▲ This is the display terminal of the biomechanical motion capture analysis system for rowing training machines built by Dell for the Chinese national rowing team, so that athletes can see in real time whether their movements are standardized through the big screen during training, and How should it be adjusted.

In fact, this system also has an important technical point: it is used for the correction of training movements, so what kind of posture is correct? Dell is an IT architect and is not an expert in rowing. Therefore, Dell is required to cooperate with the national rowing team and professional rowing mechanics experts for development. To this end, Dell dispatched scientists and engineers to the national rowing team to live and eat with athletes and coaches for more than 40 days, to learn and experience the sport together, and to develop and improve the system together.

And attentive readers may ask: There is still a difference between practicing and correcting posture on an indoor rowing training machine and actual water (on a boat) operation! Yes! Therefore, Dell has also developed a video capture and analysis system that is really used for water training. The solution is to "set up a camera on the following boat for motion capture and wireless image transmission, and the athletes on the rowing boat can wear VR glasses to watch in real time. Analyze your own actions and posture and make real-time adjustments (the AR augmented reality glasses system that can see the surrounding environment is not used for fear of interfering with the thinking of the athletes. The rowers are facing away from the forward direction, so wearing VR glasses has little impact) ——The data processing of this system is completed on the follower boat, and the coach on the follower boat can also observe the posture of all athletes in real time through the tablet.

That is to say, whether it is a rowing training machine on land or an actual water training, there is already a complete attitude capture and analysis system.

▲ Dell developed a VR glasses system for athletes on the water. The picture shows the indoor display.

▲ Rowing tips: We believe that water-based training assistance systems will be more complex, because real rowing is very different and much more complicated than training on a rowing machine. Just to give a simple example, such as the action of "turning the paddle". Turning the paddle is an alternate action of turning the paddle so that the paddle surface is perpendicular or parallel to the water surface. During the pulling stage , the oar should be kept vertical and fully immersed in the water, but not too deep into the water. The best position is when the top of the oar is just below the water surface, and the strength and efficiency can be maximized. During the return stage , the paddle is kept out of the water and kept parallel to the water surface, but the paddle should be turned to be vertical before pulling the paddle into the water. The action of pressing and turning the paddle should be gentle and fast, so that the blades are clean and neat when they come out of the water, and there is no phenomenon of carrying water or stopping, because after pulling the paddle, the boat has gained propulsion and is gliding at the fastest speed. If the action of the blades out of the water is slower than the speed of the boat, the water blocking of the blades will be formed, which will affect the forward speed of the boat - so there are many technical details of the hand movements of the paddle alone. From this point of view, the training assistance system on the water should also be able to capture and analyze the details of hand movements in detail, which is more technical!

In fact, Dell is doing more for China's rowing competition:

Previously, domestic rowing events were not highly IT-based and lacked a complete athlete database and an easily disseminated "athlete data model". Therefore, the selection of athletes was often based on the inefficient "local → provincial → national" method. Layer-by-layer selection/promotion mechanism. However, if the data collection of high-level athletes is complete, a set of "data standards for high-level athletes" can be quickly established, and applying this set of standards to the selection of athletes will greatly improve the efficiency and allow more young , Athletes with potential and strength quickly stand out! Dell is helping the Chinese National Rowing Team and the Chinese Rowing Association Kayak Association to start this work - collecting and improving a full set of data on high-level athletes and establishing a digital model.

Based on this, we can think of more. For example, from a long-term perspective, the "digital transformation of competitive sports" can completely record more data on athletes of different ages and levels of competition throughout their career cycles, even including injury data. Such data can serve more athletes, and even be used by the whole people, to contribute to "a sports power, a healthy China", and this may be the meaning of the "big data and artificial intelligence joint laboratory" will exist for a long time. Dell also said that they hope to provide similar technology empowerment services for more sports to help the development of sports in China. In short, Dell has been fulfilling its promise of "in China, for China" in all aspects including sports, which is true!

▲ Finally, the exciting video of the four-person women's sculls (super advantage) winning gold is presented as the end of this article!

The Tokyo Olympic Games are in full swing. Dell specially presents the "Extreme Boat Speed Challenge" H5 game to cheer the Olympic athletes of the Chinese rowing team and canoeing team. Participating in the game will have the opportunity to win prizes such as Dell notebooks. Let us wish the Chinese Olympic athletes great achievements in the Tokyo Olympics!

2022.02