Swimming Australia is embracing the power of generative AI to aid its coaches in understanding and utilizing data from athletes' training sessions more effectively.

With the 2024 Paris Olympics on the horizon, the Australian swimming team is set to integrate Amazon Web Services' GenAI assistant, Amazon Q, along with a range of AWS-driven predictive insight tools.

During the AWS Summit in Sydney, Jess Corones, the general manager of performance support and Olympic campaign for Swimming Australia, highlighted the development of additional tools tailored for the team’s coaches. “Our coaches are not tech experts, nor do we expect them to be,” she explained. “However, Amazon Q will enable them to query data using natural language, making it more accessible."

Corones revealed that Swimming Australia plans to implement GenAI primarily in training environments, alongside its forthcoming Training Insights system. Introduced by Corones at AWS re:Invent last year, Training Insights is a software solution that leverages machine learning and image recognition to track athletes in training pools.

Transforming Training Dynamics

“Training pools present some of our most complex environments; swimmers share lanes, perform various drills, and coaches shout different stroke rates and times from their stopwatches,” Corones elaborated. “The goal is to integrate real-time analysis and generative AI into these training settings."

The upcoming deployment of Amazon Q by Swimming Australia, which rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, is part of a broader data and analytics strategy. This includes a custom athletic improvement system called Sparta 2 and Lane Four, an online portal for coaches to access swimmer data, developed using Amazon Quicksight.

Innovating for Future Success

Corones stressed that while the immediate focus is on the Paris Olympic Games, Swimming Australia is also looking ahead. “We will never truly be finished,” she noted. “As we complete various projects and products, new opportunities for innovation always arise."

“Our ambition is to be the best globally, both in and out of the pool. We aim to continuously improve and lead through innovation.”