LAS VEGAS — As Marvin Musquin turned onto the final straightaway Saturday night at Sam Boyd Stadium, he began celebrating. He did so with pretty good reason; he was about to be $1 million richer after winning all three heats and becoming the Monster Energy Cup Supercross champion.
As myself, a writer, rode in a straight line on Friday afternoon on a dirt bike, I began celebrating. I did so with not much reason; it was the first time I had successfully rode a motorized bike.
With the stakes vastly different, Musquin and I did have one thing in common: we were both wearing a LITPro device.
LITPro MX is essentially a GPS tool reinvented for motocross and other high-speed, high-changing position sports. It measures heart rate and breaks down your ride, allowing seconds, and even twentieth of seconds, to be shaved.
“We’ve focused most of our development on how GPS is enabled,” LITPro founder and president Michael Ford said. “Then we had a bunch of other sensors to look at, you know, airtime, corner analytics, basically anything an athlete could benefit from to shave anything from a tenth of a second at this level to 10 seconds for someone who’s a beginner just getting into the sport just by riding smarter and training smarter and training more effectively.”
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At the moment, the company works with approximately 80-90 percent of pros at the top level including many who rode at MEC. LITPro had six riders (one being Musquin) wear the device with a heart rate for Saturday night’s competition.
Analytics including heart rate and average lap speed were then delivered live to fans on the in-stadium broadcast. With further testing, LITPro hopes to deliver the analytics on live TV broadcasts in the future.
“From an audience perspective, it’s interesting content,” Ford explained. “I think a lot of people maybe don’t understand the rigor of riding a motorcycle, particularly at this level. So trying to convey to the audience, to someone that might not be, you know, participating in the sport, just how difficult and how demanding this sport is. This is, you know, one of hopefully many metrics that we can help deliver to the audience in an innovative way.”
This means viewers could see Musquin’s exact heart rate the second he secured the million dollar prize. Most of the time, during a race riders will be in the 175-190 range. The exact number is reliant on factors such as age, fitness level and even how hydrated they are.
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While seeing a number is helpful for a spectator, the riders are invested in heart rate for recovery reasons. Ford explained, saying, “we do a lot of analytics around, ‘Alright, you’re done with your moto, he crossed the finish line, he does his little heel clicker and we’ll start the clock and look 60 seconds later and then 120 seconds later and we look at the decrease in heart rate, that’s called recovery rate.'”
Ryan Villopoto, who was the last to win the $1 million prize in 2011, likes what tech such as LITPro is doing for not just the riders, but also the sport as a whole. “Some of these jumps that we hit and landings that we take are super gnarly but I can only tell you that and you guys don’t know what it feels like,” he said. “But the more information that you fans have, or the fans have, to actually look and Google it and look it up, what’s six G’s look like, or however is more information and I think a lot of people will dig that and they’ll learn more about our sport and really see kind of what we go through.”
LITPro is a device for motocross and supercross, no matter the rider’s level. Ford says a major challenge often is conveying to a customer that you don’t have to be Marvin Musquin or a top-level pro to benefit from using the device.
Though it already has monthly challenges for users, going forward, LITPro aims to make the device more social. Its overall mission as a company is to get people deeper into the sport so they can realize both its difficulty (I can attest to this) and how fun it can be.