Canadian researchers rally to boost medal hopes of Olympic athletes

"Top Secret" R&D program

It's Top Secret no more. R&D may provide Canadian athletes with the edge they need to bring home gold, silver and bronze when they take to the hills, trails, rinks and sled runs at next year's Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in British Columbia. Over the past five years, Own the Podium 2010 — the organization charged with preparing Canadian athletes for competition — has spent $8 million on an array of small R&D projects ranging from to materials engineering to kinesiology.

While accounting for only a fraction of Own the Podium's overall $110-million budget, Top Secret has leveraged considerable financial and in-kind resources from a host of partners to tackle challenges faced in four research areas: air friction, ice friction, snow friction and human performance. The Top Secret program has been under wraps until Own the Podium CEO Dr Roger Jackson revealed its existence at a recent ACCT Canada meeting in Victoria BC.

Described as a "collaborative research and industry engagement program", it pulled together academic researchers from 18 institutional research groups and many industry partners to develop new types of materials for sports clothing, waxes for skis and sleds, blades for skates and various aspects of human performance. Details of the R&D projects won't be divulged until after the games have finished.

"Hope is not a strategy," says Jackson, dean of physical education at the Univ of Calgary, founding director of its University Sport Medicine Centre and a 1964 Gold medal Olympic champion in paired oars rowing. "I'm very excited that this program will have great practical results. There's enormous interest and excitement, wanting to do something to help Canada's national teams. Working with world class athletes is exciting and related to an important national goal."

The success of Top Secret's work will be judged in hundreds of a second. In the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin Italy, four skiers missed the third spot in their competitions by a tiny fraction. Jackson says that science and technology could have helped those athletes achieve medal-producing performances. Jackson says the Canadian Olympic team is aiming to be number one in Vancouver, compared to previous Winter Olympic finishes of between fifth and eighth. The Paralympic team is aiming for a third place finish.

Top Secret received 85 proposals and subjected each to technical and science review panel scrutiny. If a project did not contribute to increasing Canada's chances for a gold medal, it was excluded. Jackson acknowledges that many lessons have been learned over the past four years. If another round of R&D projects is initiated, calls for proposals will be much more focused and sports associations will be engaged at the beginning of project development to ensure a client-driven focus. Improved lines of communication will be key.

"Researchers often didn't know the sports requirements and laboratory research did not reflect in-field requirements," he says, adding that some R&D projects were not completed in time to contribute to improving athlete performance.

Countries such as Germany and Australia have achieved great success in sports competition with national S&T sports programs. Jackson is urging the federal government to make Own the Podium a permanent national program with a much larger R&D component, granting council engagement and a far greater use of post-doctoral students. Jackson says his goal is to get the program into the next federal Budget and has been meeting with officials and agency heads to make his case for boosting the R&D component by an additional $5 million a year. He recently appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance to press his argument for a larger permanent program and avoid any disruption in its activities, particularly the R&D teams that have been assembled.

"The biggest challenge we have right now is extending Own the Podium beyond the Games. The contracts we have with corporate sponsors, participating provinces and others are limited to four- or five-year arrangements ... If we don't get funding in the next federal Budget the whole thing is going to dismantle. We will lose all the linkages we have with industry, research groups and universities across Canada," says Jackson. "We would also like to discuss with the granting agencies whether or not they would like to participate in the continuation of the program and see if we can find some industries or individual companies that would be interested in taking this on as corporate policy."

NRC played major collaborative role

Of the institutions Own the Podium collaborated with, the National Research Council (NRC) was the most active. The NRC was involved in virtually every R&D project involving air friction, placing its facilities and personnel at the at the disposal of the research teams.

"They did work not only in body position but also clothing, helmets and equipment for snow boarders, freestyle skiers, alpine skiers, cross country racers and others," says Jackson. "They did very high quality research. Their reports are brilliant, their timing is great and they are absolute professionals and a joy to work with. They were excited about every project."

Other partners such as the SAIT Polytechnic participated in an R&D project for skeleton (head-first bobsled) design, producing 17 prototypes. Jackson says the green lighting of SAIT's $445-million, 70,000-sq-m Trades and Technology Complex (R$, September 2/09) could result in a far more extensive collaboration if Own the Podium is extended.

"We're really keen to look at what SAIT might offer as we go forward," says Jackson. "They have strong provincial contract possibilities with shared projects and shared financing of projects. As a result we might be a financial partner with others working with them."

Intellectual property (IP) assignment did not pose any significant obstacles to the R&D projects despite the extensive involvement of industry. All IP was owned by the developer and secondary objectives included the development of social science, science medicine and engineering expertise.

Jackson says that while Own the Podium didn't take a sophisticated business approach to the issue, each contract contained clearly stated IP and royalty obligations and outcomes. He adds that if the program continues, he plans to take a more business approach to IP.

"That's one of the reasons I decided to expose this program (Top Secret) for the first time to this group (ACCT Canada). I want to build interest and understanding of what we're attempting to do and this is a great audience," he says. "I want them to begin to think about whether or not they might like to do something with us."

Irrespective of the potential economic benefits that may accrue from the Top Secret program, Jackson says its major objective is to assist Canadian athletes in realizing their potential and bringing home medals.

"It's all about squeezing out a particular advantage Everything contributes to improving athlete performance," he says.

R$