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Olympic Snowboarders And Skiers Partner Are Using Google AI
Maddie Mastro // Courtesy of Red Bull
Some members of Team USA’s snowboard and ski teams have been training for the Olympics with a new AI tool built in collaboration with Google.
Why It Hits: The AI sports revolution is here. Several companies are already partnering with F1 teams, which makes sense from a tech standpoint. But applying AI to something as instinctive and physical as snowboarding or skiing signals just how far these systems can stretch.
Behind The Tricks: Snowboarding and skiing are now sports of snow and silicone.
According to The WSJ, several Team USA athletes have been testing a Google Cloud tool that uses “advanced computer-vision models from Google DeepMind” to track a human body in 3D space over time.
In other words, it captures and analyzes an athlete’s movements, then generates form and technique recommendations. Athletes and coaches can dive deeper into those insights by communicating with the tool’s chatbot.
And this isn’t some generic LLM scraping YouTube videos for training data — it was developed with Team USA and snowboarding legend Shaun White.
Last Run: The tool is already having real-world impact. Halfpipe snowboarder Maddie Mastro told The WSJ it helped her perfect her signature trick, the “crippler,” by pointing out that she typically lands with her arm angled above her head — something her coaches never caught that could have led to deducted style points. Tiny details like that can decide whether you medal at the Milano Cortina Winter Games, which kick off tomorrow.
Team USA is so excited about the tool that it hopes to open it to the public post-Olympics, helping train the next generation and potentially bring fans closer to the action.
Future Podium: All this elite physics data isn’t just good for Olympians — it could help Google build robots that navigate the real world with far more finesse. Dishwashing is easy when you’ve studied the biomechanics of an Olympic athlete.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Boye Akolade. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.