UBC engineers hope to help Canadian athletes own the podium
Christine Nesbitt of Canada skates to win in the women's 1,500 metres race at the World Cup speed skating competitions in Berlin, November 8, 2009.
VANCOUVER — Top-secret discoveries made by University of B.C. engineers are expected to boost Canada’s medal count at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
The secret: new, super-slick, friction-reducing metal and plastic surfaces for skates, skis and snowboards.
“Canada in the previous Olympic Games won a lot of fourth places. It’s the kind of thing that I would imagine would be very bothersome for these athletes. We thought that slightly improving the times we could push them to the podium positions,” said Savvas Hatzikiriakos, a chemical and biological engineering professor who spearheaded the project.
The team spent nearly $400,000 and more than three years developing two different surfaces ideal for competition in B.C.’s warm and wet conditions. One is a metal for speedskate blades that features a microscopic pattern shaped like a lotus-leaf in order to repel speed-impeding water.
The other is a water and snow-resistant plastic base for skis and snowboards. The plastic can reduce friction by up to 20 per cent, which could mean a one per cent reduction in time for an athlete, Hatzikiriakos said.
“It might sound low but one per cent might push you all the way from fifth or sixth place to the podium position,” he said. “We are talking about a split second between third and fourth place, so one per cent is a huge time.”
Hatzikiriakos’ team has been doing this work as part of a top-secret plan to snag as many medals as possible for Canada in 2010. The plan is the brainchild of Own the Podium, an organization that supports sport funding and research in Canada.
“That was a very significant finding. Specific to drier conditions (athletes) would use a different board, but if it’s a wet, warmer condition, like we expect here, they would use this new base,” said Own the Podium’s Todd Allinger.
The group has invested $8 million in priority funding to 55 top secret projects meant to give Canadian athletes a competitive edge. The funding is used to improve tools, technology and knowledge in four areas including air suits, ice sports, snow sports and human performance.
Allinger said that in 2002 Canadian athletes were put at a disadvantage because of their outdated equipment.
“Athletes were saying we can’t beat the U.S. They have faster speedskating suits,” he said. “We have skiers saying the Austrians are getting the best skis.”
“Obviously the athlete has to do the training. Just giving them better equipment isn’t going to make you or me win,” Allinger said.
But once an athlete reaches the top, Allinger said having the best equipment can push them to the podium. And now the Canadian equipment meets or surpasses the quality of other teams, according to Allinger.
While athletes and researchers have remained tight-lipped about most of the projects, a few are already being used publicly.
Alpine skiers tested the course in Whistler using a ultra-light wireless timing device on their helmets. The device, masterminded by the Schulich School of Engineering in Calgary, helped record which type of skis preformed better on different parts of the course and in different weather conditions.
The top-secret program also helped outfit the Whistler sliding track with video analysis equipment to boost the chances of Canada’s luge, skeleton and bobsled teams.
The UBC team was finally allowed to spill the beans last month when it published its results.
“There’s not enough time for anybody to copy us,” Hatzikiriakos said. “Maybe in the next Olympic Games but by then we should try to discover something else.”
While the patterned metal won’t be mass-produced in time for the 2010 Games, Canadian nordic ski and snowboard athletes will be sporting the new plastic bases next month.
The advantage doesn’t end with equipment. A separate Own the Podium project has a team of UBC engineers matching equipment to weather and course conditions.
Skiing in old, crystal-like snow, for example? The engineers suggest conditioning your skis with hard wax, which will combat the speed-crushing abrasiveness of the snow.
“Snow is an incredibly complex substance whose structure is dependent on temperature, relative humidity, stresses and a host of other factors. It is amazing how little was, and still is, known about the fundamental science of snow friction,” said project lead and mechanical engineering professor Sheldon Green.