KEY POINTS:
A piece of technological wizardry has pushed battling K2 kayakers Steven Ferguson and Michael Walker from pretenders to contenders at Beijing.
With the Olympics almost upon us, Ferguson and Walker had done what most would consider sporting seppuku by not only switching positions in the boats but switching makes of boats - a switch team manager Grant Restall likened to switching from Ford to Holden a couple of months before Bathurst.
To raise eyebrows even further, they have done so based on data received through technology straight from a gaming console.
For months coach Ian Ferguson - a four-time Olympic gold medallist and father of Steven - had pondered Ferguson and Walker's apparent incompatibility in the boat before help found them in the form of a Canterbury University computer expert introduced through Sparc's high-performance team.
The problem, essentially, was that "there was a lean on the boat", Restall said.
So the other paddler, Ferguson, was counter-leaning to try to make up for Walker, compromising technique, expending valuable energy and, ultimately, time.
"Ian had looked at several ways to fix it," Restall said. Sparc then came in and said they were developing technology - broadly based on the Nintendo Wii gaming console - through Dr Richard Green in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Canterbury University that could solve the problem.
Green travelled to Auckland and joined the kayaking squad at Lake Pupuke. The results were instantaneous and extraordinary.
"The first thing we did was connect some lightweight beams to the boat and place a camera two metres above the athletes.
"We're talking about Ian Ferguson here, one of the best coaches in the world, and the only view he's probably never had of his paddlers is a bird's eye view."
As soon as Ferguson saw the images, he deduced the problem. Accelerometers, which process 150 samples per second as opposed to the 30 frames per second the camera captured, placed on the paddles and side of the boat confirmed his suspicions.
It was soon discovered that Ferguson's recovery stroke was much faster on one side and Walker was "short-stroking" to keep up, sacrificing power.
Ferguson was often placed at the front of the boat to counteract the lean but when it was realised he was part of the problem and the problem was easily solved, he was moved to the back where they are a more natural fit.
It also meant they could change boats to one that was slightly longer in the back and potentially quicker.
"That's been a bit radical," Restall admitted. But pivotal in the K2 campaign.
"We're talking two to three seconds over a 3m 15s race. At this level of competition, that is pretty huge."
To put it in layman's terms, at Olympic level, it is the difference between being in the hunt for medals and being there for the 'Olympic experience'.
You can't argue with the result. They reached the podium in their final World Cup regatta in Poznan, Poland, before the Olympics, the first time they have achieved that this European summer.
Green described the process as a "massive morale boost" for everybody involved.
The former national gymnast who has spent his post-competitive life studying human movement, said it was one of Sparc's greatest successes to date.
"It was one of those cases where we thought if the coach just had a little more information at his fingertips, he'd be able to figure it out and that's exactly what happened. It was a real morale boost for the kayaking team on the eve of the Olympics, for Sparc and for Canterbury [University]."
Sparc is hoping more sports will tap into the technology provided by Green and his colleagues as part of their NZ Inc vision.
Ferguson and Walker will conclude their pre-Olympic training in Queensland, along with K1 1000m specialist Ben Fouhy and K1 500m sprinter Erin Taylor. As well as the K2 1000m, Ferguson will also race the K1 500m.
