Enhancing Rowing Performance Through Data: Insights from Okeanos' SAS Integration
In the dynamic world of competitive rowing, the quest for performance improvement has taken a new turn with the integration of SAS software at Okeanos, Amsterdam's prominent rowing club. This initiative not only aims to optimize training methodologies but also serves as a pioneering example of how sports analytics can reshape athletic development.
Tom Stikvoort, a human movement scientist and the former chairman of Okeanos, says SAS was key to helping the club think on a ‘complete strategic level’. For those not in-the-know of its inner workings, SAS software is ‘very practical, because we focus on visualizing data’, Tom tells me. ‘I’m not a data scientist, although sometimes we hire them. But the software is very user-friendly, and it is easy for the coaches to use it, to get deep insights like you can do to athletes’ metrics like heart rate or training load, and then you might scale the training accordingly.
It is emblematic of the pragmatic emphasis on data utilization in Tom’s characterization of the process with the simplest metrics: ‘Let’s start with heart rate or with power or with load, just so we get a baseline of something.’ In addition to making the data dippable for immediate performance management, Okeanos is expanding data collection gradually, knowing that they will build a more robust database if they track how athletes’ responses change in the long term. It is this type of baseline that Tom believes can enable good coaching decisions.
Nick Spanjer (student of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), a public management student working more closely with Okeanos’ SAS partnership, tells me that watching the data re-frame expectations has been illuminating. ‘They just went from being third-generation club Mariners to having big dreams,’ Nick says. Part of that is an existing partnership with leading academic institutions in sports science, using SAS to track and innovate in a way they believe will put them ahead on the water.
It is also led to a more structured approach to talent development, connecting academic theory with training in the elite world of sport. Okeanos is using SAS Viya for Learners to evaluate new rowers before they are selected for the team, allowing it to develop training programs and make decisions about composition based on data. It really is the future.
Gjalt Hoekstra, another driving force behind Okeanos, brings to the rowing world a technologist’s perspective. As a graduate of the University of Amsterdam where he focused on artificial intelligence, his work largely explores the production of data pipelines and dashboards able to forecast the behavior of athletes as they train, which can help hone their performance on a biometric level by drawing an array of ergo- and other parameters that pricing data for a competitive rowing environment.
Gjalt’s post is emblematic of Okeanos' effort to combine academic strength with real-world application, and to combine data science and high-level sport. Eventually, the dashboards using SAS software help develop and make training more effective and powerful. More importantly, they will also contribute to the future of sports analytics.
For instance, Kika Banning, Okeanos', a leading advocate for the club’s data projects, spoke about SAS’s ability to ‘revolutionize’ rowing club management by ‘harnessing rowing statistics. She emphasized using data and predictive models to improve race strategy and rower performance. However, she didn't foresee how useful this would be for calculating pace when Utley's hand failed.
Kika Banning does not stop at performance enhancement either; she sees her learning environment as a place where student-athletes from different disciplines can together be innovative with sports analytics. Through its collaboration with SAS, Okeanos ‘mission is then to help set new standards for personalized coaching and athletic development.
Through strategic partnerships, innovative research, and a commitment to student development, Okeanos is not only enhancing its competitive edge but also pioneering new standards in sports analytics. As the journey continues, Okeanos remains steadfast in its pursuit of excellence, leveraging SAS to unlock the full potential of its athletes and redefine the future of rowing. Explore the ways SAS works with higher education to equip students worldwide with the practical skills necessary for data analysis, statistical modeling, and data-driven decision-making.
