AI News Monitor

Australia’s swim team believes AI “secret weapon” can give it an edge over America at 2028 Olympics.

Australia’s Olympic swim team is collaborating with Amazon Web Services to scale up AI use. This in a bid to surpass US rivals at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

One powerful AI tool that the team is using is a race-analysis system called Sparta. Installed at the poolside, it uses advanced computer vision and machine learning to track the performance of competing swimmers. Then it sends the data to team coaches who use the insights to fine-tune their swimmers’ performance.

Sparta is custom-built for Australia’s Olympic swim team by Amazon Web Services. Jess Corones, the team’s general manager, has called it their “secret weapon.” The technology has already been used by the Australia team at the 2020 and 2024 editions in Tokyo and Paris respectively. Corones believes the technology helped their swimmers “push past boundaries” and break national records.

However, waiting until the Olympics start before they can use it is limiting what they can achieve. The team is now installing the technology in national pools so that swimmers can train with it ahead of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

“We’re always chasing the Americans,” says Corones. “They’re fantastic competitors, and we want to go into LA as the best prepared team and a lot of that is about using technology and data.”

The US is the most powerful swimming team at the Summer Olympics, having emerged as the best nation in every edition since 1992. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, the nation finished top of the table with eight gold medals, one more than Australia. Swimming Australia is now hoping artificial intelligence can help its swimmers turn the tide at the 2028 edition.

The team has also collaborated with Amazon Web Services to develop an app called Lane Four. The app collects performance data relevant to their swimmers and allows the coaches to access them from customizable dashboards. Corones and her team are now working with Amazon to install an AI assistant on Lane Four. It will allow coaches to access all the data they need by asking the assistant simple questions.

“Our coaches are not tech people,” says Corones, “and we don’t want them to be. We want them to remain world-leading coaches who can utilize and interpret the most up-to-date data around them to support their decision-making and coaching.”