Engineering the Olympics
by Deborah Menikoff, August 2008

Everyone knows that there are thousands of athletes competing in the Olympics. We see them swim, glide, run, jump, and shoot their way to medals and records. We also know that athletes have a team of people behind them. We see them on the sidelines in discussion with their coaches or trainers. We see their families and fans rooting for them.

But did you know that the athletes also have a team of engineers behind them as well? It's true.

Athletes depend on engineers to develop the equipment they need, the athletic gear they wear and training facilities they use. Engineers are also an important part of the team that brings the Olympics to life every two years. Arenas and stadiums, tracks and courses, training facilities, and some of the most sophisticated timing mechanisms known to man are all part of the engineering challenge this massive event presents. And just as the athletes start training long before they step up to the starting block, the work of the engineer starts years in advance of the opening ceremonies.

Environmental and civil engineers are involved at the earliest stages of Olympic preparation as decisions are made regarding the placement and form for the various venues needed for each sport. Each city presents special circumstances and challenges when they are chosen to host the Olympics. Engineers must consider what impact the venues will have on the surrounding areas; what access routes to and from will move the crowds most effectively and safely but which will allow existing traffic patterns and surrounding communities to continue to function smoothly. Air quality – of particular concern in the 2008 Games – is analyzed and plans made to improve or manage it. Training facilities and equipment are also now developed with the host environment in mind. Variations in elevation, with the corresponding changes in oxygen levels, can have a tremendous impact on sport performance, and engineers work with athletes to ensure that they will be able to perform as well as possible in a variety of conditions.

The individual event venues themselves are also complex engineering projects. To give you an idea of the engineer's role in a specific event, let’s look at a luge race. Luge is a fast-moving and dangerous sport. It involves a limited amount of equipment – the luge itself, racing attire (body suit, gloves, and boots) and a helmet. Each piece must be designed to make the most of aerodynamics and minimize friction if the sled is reach top speed. Material and aerospace engineers working on this equipment will find themselves dealing with many of the same issues and making use of the same tools as those working on ski and snowboard development. There are also engineers designing the track itself. With racers moving at such incredible speeds, engineers must design a course that is not only exciting and fast, but also one that is safe and conforms to the standards of the Olympic Committee. Civil and mechanical engineers use computer models to test how sleds moving at different speeds will handle each curve and straightaway, while biomechanical engineers use the same simulations to assess how the G forces created at those speeds will impact the racer’s body and performance. Simulations of local conditions are fed into the computer model as well, to help coaches and athletes change or enhance their training regimen to prepare for the real event.

One of the most remarkable feats of sports engineering in recent years has been innovations in textile engineering, and one of the most remarkable examples of that innovation is the full-body swimsuit called the Fastskin suit. The surface of the suit is designed to mimic the pattern found on sharkskin, and can decrease a swimmer’s time by 3%. This may not sound like much to you and I but in even milliseconds can make all of the difference in the world. This was thrillingly demonstrated in Beijing when Michael Phelps won the 100m Butterfly by a mere .01 seconds.

Since success at the Olympics very often comes down to timing – and narrow timing at that – each venue and course must be appropriately fitting with timing and measurement systems. This is another area where you find mechanical and electrical engineers hard at work. These systems are incredibly intricate. Not only must they work under a variety of conditions (encased in ice, in the snow, under water, inserted in clay, suspended in the air, mounted on poles, both wired and wireless), they are extremely sensitive and must conform to Olympic standards - accuracy to the millisecond. In addition, there are redundant systems developed and multiple timing devices that deliver not only numerical, but also visual and conditional data, allowing disputes to be solved more quickly and fairly than in the past.

To ensure uniform starts to races, engineers developed the electronic pressure plates embedded in the starting blocks used in both track and swimming events that indicate a false start or early push-off. Because of the often very narrow margins between competitor times, engineers are always refining the timing systems, striving to make them more and more accurate. For example: during the luge competition at the 1998 Winter Olympics, the photoelectric sensors in use at that time were revealed to have a margin of error of exactly two milliseconds – exactly the span of time that separated the gold and silver medalists. In response to concerns about the system's accuracy, the engineers of the U.S. Olympic Committee developed the high-modulation, triple-redundant system in use today, which is accurate to less than half a millisecond.

So, as we watch the Olympics, cheering our favorites on or waiting breathlessly for results, we should remember that in addition to the remarkable achievements being played out on center stage, there are also spectacular feats of engineering making that athletic greatness possible.

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