Internet of Things innovators, IoT.nxt, will introduce its technology at the 2021 947 Ride Joburg cycle race to get live metrics of its team’s activity on the day as part of a future strategy to utilise IoT technology to improve sports performance. This is a new application for its sport solution following the platform developed in association with parent company Vodafone for the British and Irish Lions rugby team earlier this year.

For the 947 Ride Joburg event each bike will be fitted with a GPS tracker, and this will send live metrics to IoT.nxt’s Commander platform on race day. Elements to be tracked include location, speed, and distance. Each rider will be wearing a smart watch which will measure similar metrics to the tracker, but also include additional metrics like the rider’s heartrate and power. The smart watch syncs to the sports platform Strava – widely used by cyclists and runners around the world. IoT.nxt pulls all the data from Strava as well as the GPS tracker to Commander, a contextual platform that visualises the data.

“There is huge potential for Sport IoT solutions as it can be applied for any sport teams as well as individual athletes. Receiving real time data about a team or individual’s metrics can drive the improvement of performance beyond what is achieved with sophisticated, scientifically developed training and coaching techniques,” says Thomas Lee, Solutions Engineering Manager at IoT.nxt.

“This use of IoT technology in sport was first introduced in July this year for the British and Irish Lions team with the Vodafone PLAYER.Connect performance dashboard, which used IoT technology that revolutionised how player data is evaluated. The IoT technology aggregated data from multiple devices worn by the players into one dashboard in real-time, allowing performance data to be viewed, analysed and acted upon instantly, from anywhere in the world,” he says.

“We will use an adapted solution for our team of four riders participating in the event hosted in Johannesburg on 21 November,” says Lee.

The IoT.nxt solution is technology agnostic, making it possible to integrate any sports tracker or device and receive real time data in a single dashboard. This allows for analysis of a sports team or individual athlete’s performance while actively engaged in sport activity, not after the fact as most devices or trackers provide. Coaches or the athletes can therefore adapt their performance while participating. The solution also makes more advanced analytics post the event possible.