TALK
ANALYSE THIS No longer the preserve of mainstream sports, video technology is giving new insights to umpires and coaches, shaping results and strategy. Charles Froggatt, founder of the International Polo Academy, explains
Technology has changed the way the world interacts with sport. Since the ‘moneyball’ strategies that famously propelled the minnow Oakland Athletics baseball team to success in the Major League in the early 2000s, everybody in sport has taken the humble statistic more seriously. The geeks in dark rooms have now been given the title ‘performance analysts,’ and their work, accessed in the form of video analysis and data, has become vital both to the success of any team serious about winning and for the bigger picture of sport. Turn on ESPN and all you see are statistics; find yourself in any professional sports changing room and you will see the play breakdown on a screen. Down the hall, referees will review their decisions on iPads, and in the press room, managers – forced to cover their mouths during the game to ward off lip readers – are thrust in front of the camera to talk to fans at home, even
though many viewers are more interested in their fantasy teams than the actual results. While no one could imagine polo reaching the lip-reading stage, it was only a matter of time before technology and the ‘game of kings’ would find each other. Although it has taken a few years for the drones, analysts and iPads to reach the matches, the results are rather exciting. Teams, coaches, umpires, players, federations and polo’s fans are beginning to see the value in the application of filming techniques and analysis. And so, it turns out, polo is not as old-school as you may think. If there was one country to be the first to fully embrace technology, the numberone candidate would be the USA – particularly in the 2015 Florida season. Take the US Open final as an example. Like most of the eight teams taking part, Bob Jornayvaz’s Valiente had two video sessions on the day before their final against Orchard Hill. Set plays and possession are the primary focus of high-goal teams in game preparation. At its most basic level, the process of creating
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