UCAM and the Athletics Federation are looking for the best strategy for Spanish walkers at the Olympic Games
The presidents of both entities, María Dolores García Mascarell and Raúl Chapado, have signed an agreement on the Los Jerónimos Campus, so that experts from the UCAM Research Centre for High Performance Sport will carry out the study of the athletes that will face the mixed relay event in the fight for medals. This event will be the first of its kind in Paris.
At the new Olympic event, which has the distance of a marathon (42'195 km), the male athlete alternates with the female one, so that each of them remains ‘inactive’ for about 40 minutes after which he or she re-joins the competition, once the partner has completed the corresponding distance, something unheard of in elite sport.
This research contract, which has now been signed, formalises work that in reality already started a few weeks ago. The aim is to ensure that these athletes do not reduce their performance in the subsequent relay, said Professor Pedro Emilio Alcaraz, Director of the UCAM CIARD. He explained that ‘with each of the athletes, of the five pairs selected by the national team, we are analysing the physiological response of the first sector, in order to know the dehydration, the metabolic and cardiovascular changes or the central temperature among others, with the aim of applying a protocol that helps to restore the values of the athletes to the levels prior to the start of the event’.
The aim is to ensure that these athletes do not reduce their performance in the subsequent relay
Designed by researchers at UCAM, it not only analyses the performance of the athletes but also, as Alcaraz adds, ‘seeks the optimum performance in the second post, after standing still, with optimum heat-up to boost the neuromuscular system and thus improve their performance’.
Raúl Chapado, president of the RFEA, thanked the UCAM ‘for its commitment to innovation, for the work it is doing in research to enhance the performance of athletes, in this case walkers, a discpline in which Spain is a world power’. It should be noted that CIARD-UCAM has been working with some of the best athletes in the country for several years, including the current 20 and 35 km world walking champions, Álvaro Martín and María Pérez, and Miguel Ángel López and Mariano García, former European and world champions.
CIARD-UCAM has been working with some of the best athletes in the Spain for several years
The CIARD-UCAM research team has been monitoring the pairs since the last Spanish Championships in Zaragoza in February, including the International Meeting held in March in the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, and will continue to fine-tune the protocol with the three pairs of walkers selected for the World Race Walking Championships to be held on 21 April in Antalya, Turkey.