At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2024 Paris Olympics, World Athletes allowed wearables to track a variety of biometric data in the marathon run. The technology, developed by visionary Professor Yannis Pitsiladis, was able to track real-time body temperatures.

Professor Pitsiladis and his team wanted to track the impact of extreme temperatures on these runners – and other athletes during the Paris Olympics. He explained, “In [our] research to date, the internal body temperatures of some athletes have exceeded 41°C (105.8°F), which is dangerous and can lead to organ malfunction and even failure. We worked with Paris Olympic competitors to ‘keep track to stay safe’ with live-transmitting technology that allows the tracking of multidisciplinary data within a single application.”

The system required the athletes to swallow an electronic capsule the night before their competition and wear a smart wristband to provide live feedback on the land and air temperature where they were competing, their heart rate, and a range of physiological and biomechanical parameters facilitated through a single, cloud-based portal database.

This system enabled coaches, trainers, and medical staff real-time access to the athlete’s personable data – and, very importantly, enables medical and support teams to respond quickly to any dangerous situation.

Professor Pitsiladis explains his broader vision, “Working with these elite Olympic athletes has broader applications. Just as car manufacturers explored innovations with Formula One drivers and then introduced these innovation to consumer vehicles, so we expect to take our research findings on heat stroke in elite athletes to people working in challenging environments and to first responders and the military.”

World Aquatics is now following in the wake of its dryland cousin, World Athletics that governs the track and field community.

World Aquatics now allows technology such as drones, GPS tracking, and biomedical sensors or devices that record blood pressure, body temperature, stroke rate, and breathing rate via transponders. The technology may transmit such information, but products cannot serve as receivers that give information or advantages to the swimmers such as smart goggles or hearing devices.

If World Aquatics can explore these areas like World Athletics is currently doing, then perhaps tragedies like the unfortunate death of Fran Crippen in 2010 and the many other unfortunate deaths that have occurred in open water swimming due to hypothermia and hyperthermia can be prevented – or at least reduced.

While the running community and other dryland sports have readily accepted these types of wearable technologies, the swimming community (both pool and open water) has been very reticent to even try these technologies. Runners, soccer players, sailors, field hockey players, and many different types of athletes are using the biometric-tracking sensors and swallowing capsules (that are excreted later) to learn more about their biometrics during competition, but swimmers and their coaches have, so far, unanimously declined these opportunities.

If World Athletes runners, its coaches, and medical and scientific leaders can track and analyze a variety of biometric data during competition to ensure safety and improve performances and training methods, we are hopeful that the swimming community can also begin to learn the advantages with in-performance information and data to enhance training.

Let’s see what happens in LA28.

Wearables Currently Allowed by World Aquatics Athletes

• Abbott’s FREESTYLE LIBRE 2, a glucose sensor
• Exelio’s GPS EXE Pro 2, a GPS tracking device
• FES Institut’s FES SwimSensor, a GPS tracking device and sensor
• Garmin’s HRM-SWIM heart rate monitor
• Garmin’s HRM-TRI heart rate monitor
• Movella’s DOT (Xsens) sensor
• Polar’s OH1 heart rate monitor
• Polar’s Verity Sense heart rate monitor
• Polar’s H10 heart rate monitor
• Swimtraxx’s Swimtraxx One heart rate + strokes monitor + accelerometer
• Tritonwear’s Triton 2 transponder

Note that the solo channel swimming and marathon swimming worlds would not allow these devices or data as even wristwatches are not officially allowed, but in terms of 5 km, 10 km, and 3 km Knockout Sprints, this data would be fascinating to analyze and utilize to improve future performances and enhance safety, especially under conditions with extreme temperatures.

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