Introducing the drag-reduction device helping Olympians to run faster
From the most recent carbon plate shoes to sensor-enabled running tracks, scientists, designers and engineers are continuing to break the mould, gather new insights and produce cutting-edge technology and tools to give runners that edge – especially elites gunning for glory at the Olympic Games. And one of the latest such developments is a prototype called the Airshield, a drag-reduction device that does just as it suggests and enables athletes to run without the obstacle of air resistance.
Developed by Melanie Zeilinger, Dr Andrea Carron and Christina Spengler at Switzerland’s ETH Zurich University, the Airshield employs an existing sprinting technique called ‘overspeed training’. Overspeed training uses artificial means to allow a runner to run faster than they can do otherwise, without assistance. The goal of this is to help the body to learn the neuromuscular sequences required to run at that speed. As a result, the runner should, in theory, eventually be able to recreate those sequences and reach that level of performance without the aid of wind blocking.
‘It’s an indescribable feeling. We’re used to a lot of air resistance when we run. The Airshield gets rid of all of that. You feel as though you could fly,’ says Swiss sprinter Géraldine Frey in a video created by Nicole Davidson and the university.
This new prototype works by deflecting air around the runner. The Airshield is a wheeled, wedge-shaped and open-backed partition covered in transparent plastic and powered around a running track by a human-operated electric go-kart. Running directly behind the shield, a LiDAR sensor continuously measures the runner’s distance from it and wirelessly sends that information to the go-kart, which automatically speeds up or slows down to match their speed exactly. The human driver is only needed for their left-turn steering skills around the running track.
‘I’ve found that, with other devices, it takes two or three sessions to really be able to trust them,’ says Swiss sprinter and 2022 60m indoor world champion Mujinga Kambundji. ‘With the Airshield, it only took one or two sprints. That’s very cool.’
Unlike the 1080 – another device used for sprint resistance which is attached to a runner’s body – Kambundji says that there’s no external influence from the Airshield. ‘The best thing is that you don’t really notice that you’re training with the shield,’ she says. ‘But you do still notice that it’s really fast, and that it’s overspeed training.’
Multiple cameras are also attached to the Airshield to capture all-important, comprehensive footage of an athlete’s running technique and biomechanics, which can be closely analysed to help them improve their subsequent performance. Researchers have also tested the prototype by inserting sensors in athletes’ shoes to record the maximum speed that they can reach when running in various situations: unassisted, with the Airshield and with a resistance cable – another overspeed training tool commonly used by sprinters.
‘Looking at how [the athletes] are sprinting, we can observe that it’s very different depending on whether they’re being pulled or whether they can simply run faster without air resistance,’ says Spengler.
It’s unclear if, or when, the Airshield will be rolled out and made available to purchase. However, Spengler and her colleagues hope that, at least in the short term, the device will give the Swiss team an advantage going into the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
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