NZZ Swiss Ski Command Center
Swiss Ski uses science in the new Command Center to make athletes even faster – and every second counts
Remo Geisser, NZZ
End of January, Ski World Cup in Schladming: Thomas Tumler stands in the starting gate, a beep announces that the race is about to start. As the athlete pushes off, cheers erupt at the edge of the piste. Hundreds of kilometers away, Björn Bruhin and Luca von Siebenthal reach for their computer mice in a room full of screens. In the so-called Command Center at the Swiss Ski headquarters in Worblaufen near Bern, the two are recording data that they will send to Schladming a little later via WhatsApp.
They are competing against the clock and yet appear completely relaxed, communicating in short sentences. Luca von Siebenthal is watching a stream provided by the SRF TV channel on the screen directly in front of him. The images arrive somewhat faster on this channel than for television viewers.
Profile of the World Cup slalom
The Swiss Ski coach at the start in Schladming is also receiving this stream on a tablet. This means that Loïc Meillard, who will start the race with the number 5, can follow Tumler’s run a little earlier than if he had the usual TV signal available. Every second counts in race mode. This also applies in the Command Center. As soon as Tumler reaches the finish line, von Siebenthal begins to measure the rider’s run.
Luca von Siebenthal places a dot at each gate in the TV picture and measures the time it takes the athlete to get from one pole to the next. In the giant slalom, this is an average of 1.3 seconds, interjects Bruhin, who is working on another screen next to him. In slalom, it takes an average of less than 0.9 seconds from one gate to the next.
The FIS also provides the teams with a data set for each race, which includes the distance from gate to gate, the lateral offset and the gradient. This and the time intervals from gate to gate result in a kind of profile of the World Cup slaloms.
This helps coaches, right down to the junior level, to flag up training runs that are as close as possible to the reality of elite sport. The days when poles were drilled into the snow by feel are long gone: Today, every gate is measured, even in training. Nevertheless, there are personal preferences. It would be possible to create a kind of template of typical runs for every course setter in the World Cup. But that is still a long way off.
Björn Bruhin is head of research at Swiss Ski, and the Command Center is just one of his projects. Last year, the concept was tested in a project phase, and Swiss Ski has installed the computer room in Worblaufen for this season. There are also mobile units at major races, and at the World Championships in Saalbach the scientists work in a hotel room, as they did in January at the Lauberhorn races. The Command Center in Worblaufen is in operation for eighty days; in addition to the Alpine skiers, the freestylers and Nordic skiers are also supplied with data.
The teams set up weather stations at various positions along the downhill courses. Swiss Ski also measures the entire slope with GPS. Bruhin and his colleagues look for a position on the opposite slope from which they can film as much of the course as possible. They then define sections in which the skiers are compared with each other. A GPS tracker, which the athletes slip under their suits before the start, also helps with this.
In speed races, it is also always recorded which athlete is wearing which suit. They can choose from suits with different fabrics and cuts. The aim is to find out what is fast in which conditions, as nature cannot be fully simulated in a wind tunnel. Swiss Ski also wants to know how often a suit is used. The rule for top athletes is that a suit is worn once in a downhill and once in a Super-G. After that, it is sufficient for training, or it is passed on to lower squads.
Comparison with the fastest racer
In the giant slalom in Schladming, the first 15 racers finish and the Command Center works quickly and with concentration. Luca von Siebenthal measures the times from gate to gate; Bruhin edits videos together. The aim is for the coaches to have all the analyses available when number 30 has finished the run.
They are all compared with the fastest skier in the first run, in this case Loïc Meillard. His time forms a straight line in one graph, while the other curves zigzag. This allows the coaches to see at a glance where time was gained or lost. After his elimination at the start of the season in Sölden, Marco Odermatt looked at this graph before talking to the journalists. That’s why he was able to remain calm: “I know that my form is right. At the gate where I dropped out, I had a 0.7 second lead.”
In Schladming, the 27-year-old didn’t do the first run as planned. Luca von Siebenthal sets his measuring points and says: “Odi skied the ‘banana’ completely differently.” Bruhin cuts the corresponding images: “He made a lot more distance.” The videos that Bruhin sends to Schladming show two athletes side by side in the same passage. Or the skiers are superimposed in one image. The latter is more of an add-on in the technical disciplines, but very helpful in speed races, where line choice is crucial.
Accessible on your smartphone
You can play with the data and images endlessly. Bruhin says that in previous years, more material was made available to the coaches than in the current season. Feedback has shown that more is not always better. Coaches and athletes can only implement a limited amount of input between two runs. That is why there is now an order form on which the coaches indicate what they want. This includes data from the second run, which provides reference points for training.
The coaches cannot leave their positions on the side of the track during the race. In the past, there were people who collected their memory cards and then produced videos in the finish area. This is much quicker in the Command Center. The graphics and videos are placed in a chat so that they are immediately available on the smartphone. This is another reason why it is important that there is no flood of data.
Insights that are gathered during the season can also be used to train coaches. The more precisely the technicians know which goal distances, figures and rhythms are common at the highest level, the better young athletes can be introduced to this level. It’s not just about Odermatt being fast today – his successors are already being built up.
From the NZZ E-Paper of 15.02.2025
