Inside outside

During the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, the archery event integrated live heart rate data of athletes into television broadcasts. You could see the highs and lows as athletes won, lost, struggled, held their nerve and overcame. This was an unprecedented public display of the inner life of an athlete.?You'll be surprised to know how the hear rate data was collected - not with wearables, but by using high-frame-rate camera technology that focused on the athlete's face, eyes and skin colour.

It isn't difficult to see the commercial value in making sport more interesting for spectators. Every sport is fighting a battle for relevance and attention.

However, we might want to pause and ask whether there are certain lines we do not want to cross and, if so, where we want to draw these lines. Heart rate data may seem reasonably harmless to some, but it is just the beginning of technology's march into hitherto private areas. These are spaces that might previously have been policed by the athlete's consent.

Just as I was thinking about this, I came across this article and this one that were startling, yet hopeful. A couple of extracts below:

A brand-new innovation is coming to the Paris Olympics this summer: uniforms that creeps can't see through with infrared cameras.

This development coincides with a growing trend to combat explicit photography of sportswomen, something which can have serious consequences for the victims. Reiko Shiota, a member of the badminton team that competed at the Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Games, saw photos of her breasts and lower body widely circulated on the internet.

Developed by Japanese equipment manufacturer Mizuno, the fabric prevents infrared photos from highlighting the underwear, or even the bodies, of athletes. Produced in collaboration with manufacturers Sumitomo Metal Mining and Kyodo Printing, the new fabric incorporates light-absorbing materials in the infrared range.

It is heartening (excuse the pun) to see sports governing bodies and manufacturers fight technology with technology. Perhaps that is what the future holds.

There are many battles ahead between technology and privacy. Sports governing bodies have to start looking at privacy as a 'duty of care' issue.

We all have some questions to answer, too.

We will need to decide what role we see for our athletes, what costs we expect them to pay, and what we will do to empower them.

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