NEW YORK CITY – Age-old sports such as equestrian that have been in the Olympics for 100-plus years but are struggling to stay relevant, are beginning to tap technology to engage a new generation of fans.
At the Central Park Horse Show in New York City this past weekend, event sponsor and German technology company SAP showcased apps and technologies it’s implementing for horse race operator CHIO Aachen in an effort to make the sport more interactive for fans and more analytical for riders.
The tech upgrades are part of an effort to attract new fans to the sport, whose support is critical in keeping equestrian up and running and its position in the summer Olympics secure, according to Henrike Paetz, SAP’s Global Head of Equestrian Sports.
On the fan-facing side, technologies range from an app, called the SAP Spectator Judging app, that lets users make their own judgements on show-jumping movements, to a dashboard with a live camera feed that shows viewers the faraway happenings of cross country equestrian when horses are out of sight.
The app, which lets fans unofficially score riders on quantitative and qualitative metrics, is meant to engage fans who might otherwise be sitting passively in stands by allowing them to see how their judgements stack up against those of qualified officials.
@Ingrid_Klimke leverages SAP tech to improve her rides. Learn how: https://t.co/oGt4sysdb2 pic.twitter.com/0M3xisSLY3
— SAP Cloud Platform (@sapcp) September 13, 2017
Over the long term, though, it’s SAP’s data analytics capabilities and visualization tools that have the potential to change the way the sport is viewed and performed overall.
The SAP Equestrian Analytics platform captures live data from the course via sensors on riders and beacons at markers around the course that track information about movement, speed, time, acceleration and obstacle position. It’s similar to the trackers SAP placed on catamarans during the Extreme Sailing Series to visualize the race for fans on land.
The data being collected through equestrian events can be used to populate a video feed from riders’ helmet cameras, which CHIO Aachen currently clips and uses for post-race social media content.
One could see, however, how the dashboard could alter the live-viewing experience for fans if it were to be implemented in a real-time setting, with race data visualizing how a rider is performing compared with expectations and the competition.
“We want to visualize things for the audience that aren’t visual right now,” said Paetz.
From a coaching standpoint, the GPS trackers can show the exact lines a rider traveled, which may provide insight as to why and at which points one rider pulled ahead over another.
Some riders, including Ingrid Klimke, an Olympic equestrian rider and SAP ambassador, have started to review the data collected from the course during races to analyze performance, address weaknesses and tweak training. Klimke said the tools have “fundamentally transformed” the way she trains.