Heading into national swimming championships, the University of Virginia relies on a mathematician, cameras and sensors to help each swimmer perform their best.

Transcript

DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:

College swimmers compete in the NCAA championship later this month. University of Virginia athletes have been working to improve their times with high-tech devices and advice from one of the world's leading mathematicians. From member station WVTF, Sandy Hausman has this report.

BLAIRE BACHMAN: Ready, go.

SANDY HAUSMAN, BYLINE: Paige Madden was a swimming star in high school, setting seven records for the state of Alabama. She went on to swim for the University of Virginia and hoped to compete in the Olympics, but she doubted she could qualify in her best event, the 200-meter freestyle. Then the head of the math department at UVA told Madden she could improve her time by six seconds, which was exactly what she did.

PAIGE MADDEN: At the time, I didn't believe him. But he did the math, and he was like, I think you can go that. And then I did, and I just have to give him credit for believing in me and just seeing that.

HAUSMAN: Professor Ken Ono based his encouragement on science and math, sticking small sensors to athletes' backs to see when they speed up and when they slow down.

KEN ONO: Are you set?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yes.

ONO: OK. You guys ready? Go.

HAUSMAN: For coach Todd DeSorbo, that information is the start of a winning strategy.

TODD DESORBO: Those sensors give indications of where and when and how an athlete generates force and, more importantly, where they're inefficient. The sensors can detect inefficiencies that we can't see.

HAUSMAN: Mathematician Ono also puts cameras in the water to record each swim and compare points of acceleration or drag with specific motions.

ONO: Things such as the depth of your dive, the angle at which you push off a wall, the distance between your feet as you set up your push - everything that you think you can count and measure is something that should be looked at.

HAUSMAN: As the data pours in, Ono begins calculating, viewing every swimmer as a math problem.

ONO: You know, no two people have the same body type, and there's so many different factors that have to come together to make a world-class swimmer. If you want to get faster, you want someone to tell you how you can get faster. And without that knowledge, you have to guess. We don't guess.

HAUSMAN: For example, Ono told associate coach Blaire Bachman that one swimmer's turns could be faster.

BACHMAN: The distance that she is from the wall when she initiates those turns correlates to the power and acceleration that she gets when she pushes off. So there's at least a tenth of a second on every single turn for her that, over the course of a 500 or a mile race, adds up to anywhere from six to nine seconds.

HAUSMAN: At the Olympics in Tokyo, that swimmer, Emma Weyant, won a silver medal.

EMMA WEYANT: Yeah, that was probably one of the best experiences of my life.

HAUSMAN: And teammate Paige Madden was able to compete after Ono discovered her right side was weaker than the left. By building up that right side, she improved enough to qualify.

MADDEN: When you get to this level in college, like, you're only going to get better by making very subtle changes because you're already doing a lot of things right. I had to tuck my chin a little bit more to reduce drag and also, like, my hand position when I'm turning. It's just very small things like that that have been helpful.

HAUSMAN: She was part of the women's 200-meter freestyle relay, which came home with silver.

BACHMAN: Six-five, five-six, Emma, Maddie. Six-five, Alex.

HAUSMAN: Now these swimmers hope hours of work in the pool coupled with hours of mathematical calculation will bring another victory when they compete in the NCAA championship in Atlanta beginning next Tuesday. For NPR news, I'm Sandy Hausman in Charlottesville, Va.

(SOUNDBITE OF BATTLES' "INCHWORM") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Tags: swimming