The second week of the Olympic Games sees two Australian engineers still in contention: hurdler Michelle Jenneke and synchronised swimmer Amie Thompson.
Jenneke is a third-year mechatronics student at the University of Sydney who has become one of the faces of the Australian team thanks in part to videos of her dancing before races that have gone viral.
She has big shoes to fill given fellow Australian Sally Pearson won this event at the London Olympics. Interestingly she credits her shoes as being one thing that can make a dramatic difference in a race. In the bottom of each shoe is a hard plate made from plastic or carbon fibre, which keeps the sole as firm as possible.
“You don't want something that is weighing you down but if you can have a really stiff plate then it gives you more return off the ground,” Jenneke says. “If you can reduce your ground contact time then you will go faster.”
She says in athletics there isn't a lot of overt technology assisting runners in their training but believes it has influenced the content of their training.
“My general day-to-day training is not that different because of technology,” Jenneke says.
“I do think technology is making a big change, but it is a change that is difficult to identify. Because of the data I get back from my monthly biomechanic screening, or because of the slow-motion video my mother films on an iPhone at training, I might end up doing different drills or different exercises. In doing those drills and exercises I don't consider that I am doing anything different. But actually the reason I am doing those specific exercises is because of technology.”
Jenneke's heat of the 100 m hurdles will be tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 12.12am (AEST). In the western states, that equates to late Tuesday evening. At last year's world championships, she made the semifinals of the event but not the final although her personal best time would have been enough for her to qualify for the final last year.
The other engineer still in competition, Amie Thompson, is a mining engineering student at Curtin University of Technology in Perth. Thompson is competing in the synchronised swimming team event. The technical part of the competition begins at 2am (AEST) Friday morning followed by the free routine at 1am Saturday morning.
She may not be the only engineer in the team in years to come with her 17 year old teammate Cristina Sheehan indicating she would like to study environmental engineering when she finishes school.
The medal tally for the Australian engineers currently sits at 1 gold, 2 silver and a bronze after swimmer Mitch Larkin won a bronze medal as part of the 4x100 m medley relay. This medal tally would see the Australian engineers placed 35th on the table ahead of countries like Romania and Argentina.
Unfortunately, the men's hockey team, the Kookaburras, which had won medals at the past six Olympics and contained two engineers, was knocked out of the competition in the quarterfinals by the Netherlands.
[Photo courtesy: Michelle Jenneke]
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