SAS signs multiyear partnership with Sport Ireland Institute

Analytics software to power 2020 Olympic effort

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Sport Ireland has signed a multi-year partnership agreement business analytics software and services provider SAS, which will see the multinational become the Official Analytics Partner of Sport Ireland Institute through to March 2021.

The agreement, a first for the Sport Ireland Institute, will see SAS’ analytics technology employed at international level for competitions such as the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo.

Using information collected by the performance support teams in these sports, SAS technology will facilitate the creation of dynamic performance databases and interactive tools. The insights from these will help athletes and coaches develop new and improved ways of working to improve athlete performance in training and competitions.

Director of the Sport Ireland Institute Liam Harbison said: “This is an exciting opportunity for the Sport Ireland Institute as we now seek to leverage SAS technology alongside skills and expertise from the corporate sector and apply these same principles to the elite sport environment – potentially joining dots that we didn’t even know existed – in the lead up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“We have already identified two projects which these solutions will be especially beneficial for, boxing and swimming, and are excited to see what the results will yield. We will be using a targeted approach, where we apply the technology and thinking to those sports that have a track record of using performance related data. We hope this will help guide decision making for the remaining projects.”

Scott Comber, senior director of consulting & professional services, SAS UK & Ireland, said: “While analytics will not provide a single answer to everything, what we do know is that it will help the Sport Ireland Institute make lots of smarter decisions based on insights from data. We look forward to helping the Sport Ireland Institute find more innovative ways of working with athletes through analytics, to ultimately improve performance.”

TechCentral Reporters

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