The Science Behind the Glory |

With the Euro Cup about to wrap up and the Olympic Games just weeks away, I'm getting excited. I love the human drama of sport, the compelling backstories, the inspirational individual and team efforts. And for me, some of the most interesting stories are about the science and the technology behind the winning performances.

Pursuing athletic success is a high-tech undertaking. From athletics to cycling to swimming, top athletes are supported by laptop-toting experts who use biomechanics to analyze their techniques and design their training programs. Sport psychologists, therapists and nutritionists support their conditioning and wellness. Engineers use computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnels to model and test the aerodynamic properties of equipment and uniforms.

For example, researchers at the Royal Veterinary College's Structure and Motion Laboratory have studied how greyhounds and cheetahs run in the hope that understanding the biomechanics of the world's fastest animals will lead to improved technique for human sprinters.

Many sprint athletes at the London Olympics will wear the Nike Pro TurboSpeed, a dimpled tracksuit which the company claims reduces drag and can improve results by as much as 0.023 seconds in a 100 meter event.

Technological advances in sport don't always have a positive outcome. Speedo introduced a polyurethane swimsuit in 2008 that significantly reduced drag and, some suspect, increased buoyancy. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, nearly 90 percent of swimming medals were won by athletes wearing the Speedo suits. As world records fell with increasing frequency to swimmers clad in polyurethane suits, suspicion grew that they gave swimmers an advantage in the form of increaded buoyancy, and swimming's governing body announced a ban on the controversial suits effective in 2010. To many, the nearly 200 world records set by swimmers wearing the suits during the brief period they were worn in competition are tarnished by the ban. Read about The Science Behind the Swimsuit War.

Learn more about the science behind the spectacle: