Indoor rowing a testbed for elite performance analyst.

Moe Sbihi, British indoor rowing record holder and Olympic gold medal-winner, is ready to set the pace at the British Rowing Indoor Championships (BRIC) this Saturday.

Indoor rowing has a practical element to the training of Britain’s elite squad, as data collected to gauge an athlete’s performance and progress is more reliable, as Mark Homer, Senior Sport Scientist for British Rowing explained: “The rowing machine is important to us as our fixed test bed to compare athletes’ scores. Out on the water, because of the elements, speeds can be influenced by the environment”.

At a recent event organised by SAS, the official analytics partner of British Rowing, Sbihi, who broke Sir Matthew Pinsent’s 11-year British indoor 2km record in 2015, threw down the gauntlet to other rowers: “It’s a really exciting event to be part of. Hopefully what I did last year will inspire people to give it a go”.

SAS, the leader in analytics, has been working with the athletes and coaches to help understand British Rowing’s data analytics requirements. The aim of the work is to streamline data collection, storage and analysis as well as track individual’s training programmes, forecast problems and solutions and ultimately improve performance.

Hugo D’Ulisse, Head of Analytical Platform at SAS UK & Ireland, said: “Ergo training generates a significant quantity of data from which you can get insights into an individual’s performance over time. As we look ahead to the next Olympiad we will, in addition to this, be looking at everything from medical data to weather data and of course performance data as we look to achieve the ultimate goal of making the boat go faster.”

For more information about SAS’s partnership with British Rowing, visit: www.sas.com/en_gb/offers/14q2/british-rowing/Overview.html and for more information on the British Rowing Indoor Championships visit: indoorchamps.britishrowing.org/

About British Rowing

British Rowing, as the governing body for the sport, is responsible for the development of rowing in England and the training and selection of rowers to represent Great Britain.

The GB Rowing Team is the high-performance arm of British Rowing. Rowing has a proud history as one of GB’s most successful Olympic sports producing World, Olympic and Paralympic Champions from across the UK. The squad is supported by the National Lottery Sports Fund.

Around a quarter of a million people row in England on a monthly basis, according to Sport England’s Active People Survey (APS 9 Oct 2014 – Sept 2015, aged 14+).

British Rowing’s mission is to lead, enable and inspire excellence in rowing at all levels. Our vision, through rowing, is to promote the positive impact of sport by providing an enjoyable experience for all participants while upholding our position as a leading rowing nation.