Chemical engineer Catherine Skinner held her nerve this morning to win gold in the women's trap shooting event at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
In the qualifying rounds, Skinner struggled early shooting 22/25 and 21/25 in the first two rounds but a strong 24/25 in the third round saw her narrowly qualify for the semi-finals. There she topped the group, qualifying for the gold medal match against Natalie Rooney from New Zealand.
Rooney took an early lead in the final but Skinner stayed focussed on each target rather than the overall score and eventually prevailed 12-11.
"It's one of those things that you say in the mirror before it all happens, going 'yeah it's going to happen, it will!'," she told the ABC.
"But at the moment it really happened? It's really hard to describe just how surreal this is."
Another Australian engineer has a great chance to add to the medal tally tomorrow morning. Swimmer Mitch Larkin is competing in the 100 m backstroke, an event in which he is the reigning world champion. Today, he qualified third fastest for the final behind Americans Ryan Murphy and David Plummer.
Larkin is currently studying engineering at Queensland University of Technology. He spoke to create magazine recently about swimming and engineering and he features on the cover of the August issue of create. He said one of the greatest challenges in the sport involves what is known as the feel for water.
“This can be the hardest thing to explain to those who haven't experienced it,” he says.
“It's the ability to move your hand and arms in a specific way, creating the largest surface area possible, allowing your arm to grab hold of the water and accelerate your body forward.”
The most important numbers in swimming, apart from course time, are strokes per lap and stroke rate, he says. A high stroke rate and a low stroke count equates to maximum feel for the water and, therefore, maximum speed.
With this in mind, each month Larkin is strapped by a harness around his waist to a force gauge secured to a starting block, then swims at his race stroke rate for 30 seconds.
“A team of sports scientists then analyse the data received and find the stroke rate that results in the most efficient rate, the highest force output in newtons whilst being able to sustain this rate over the duration of my race,” he says.
The results allow Larkin to analyse which parts of the stroke are more powerful than others. He can also compare power output from left and right arms to check symmetry and balance.
Studying engineering, Larkin says, has helped him to better understand forces such as flotation, lift and balance.
“Take Newton's third law - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” he says. “Sometimes certain muscles in my body become tight from training and my technique isn't looking as good as it should ... We go back and, analysing my stroke in slow motion, often find that tight area is causing a delay in my stroke as there is another area trying to counter-balance it … This is just a small example but it’s fascinating how everything is connected.”
The final of the 100 m backstroke will be at 11.38 (AEST) tomorrow morning (Tuesday).
[Catherine Skinner (left) with her medal (Photo: Alister Nicholson/ABC News) and the cover of the most recent create magazine featuring Mitch Larkin.]
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Engineers take their marks at the Olympics