London 2012 Done

I love the Olympics and London 2012 did not disappoint.  There are many great moments I would love to talk about but this blog is about performance analysis.  So what kind of performance analysis issues popped up?

British Cycling – The Ultimate of Performance Analysis in Practice

David Brailsford, Performance Director of British Cycling, is probably the ultimate performance analyst.  OK, he doesn’t actually do any actual analysing but performance analysis is about enhancing performance and he puts everything in place to achieve that.  Seven track cycling gold medals out of a possible ten speaks for itself.

Designing a New Volleyball Analysis System

Watching numerous hours of top level volleyball really made me rethink how volleyball can be analysed.  Questions popped up about how effective the setter attack is (which I believe it should be adopted more), does the block help or hinder (blocks kills versus block outs) and is the jump top-spin serve really justified if there are many more errors than aces (it could be argued a safe serve generally results in a point lost anyway). 

*** Update 1 February 2021 | I did actually look into whether it was worth blocking in non-elite volleyball (see link) and whether to jump top-spin serve or not (see link).  How effective the setter attack is is something I could look into ***

*** Update 4 June 2022 | I eventually did look into setter attacks.  Click on this link for more details ***

New Analyst Opportunities

With the success of Team GB, there may be new opportunities for analysts in other sports that were particularly successful.  This is something I should look into, especially if there is new funding.