If there is an edge to be gained by New Zealand's elite athletes as they prepare for the 2012 Olympics, then chances are technology developed in Dunedin will be a major factor in keeping ahead of the competition.
Millions of dollars are being invested in research and development in the city as entrepreneurs put their skills to the test to help the athletes become even better at what they do.
Sometimes, the sporting applications come from technology already developed but needing to be tweaked to become a sports application.
Other times, the sporting application had already been developed, but more refinements were needed as demands from athletes and coaches became more detailed.
The man overseeing much of this exciting technological development is Richard Young, a high-performance consultant with Sparc (Sport and Recreation New Zealand).
Mr Young and his family moved to Dunedin from Auckland about four years ago because of the contacts he had made within the tight-knit technology industry.
He figured it was better to be within a kilometre or two of the people he was dealing with than the length of New Zealand.
Was it worth the shift, the Otago Daily Times asked Mr Young.
"For Dunedin, there is a critical mass of technology for high-performance sport. There are niches in other centres - coding in Auckland, engineering in Christchurch. But in Dunedin, it is sports.
"We [Sparc] have a close relationship with each of the guys here. When I needed a website, I was pointed to Enabling Technology. It is a close community and everyone can work together," he said.
There were two major developments to have recently come out of Dunedin that were already helping top sports people - an iPhone application training tool for triathletes, developed by George Sealy, and a tracking device for Yachting New Zealand, developed by Brent Russell, of Igtimi, and Ian Taylor, of Animated Research Ltd.
Mr Russell also had a role in the iPhone app development.
The third major prong of Mr Young's campaign to help athletes prepare for the Olympics was a new website - highperformancesport.co.nz or hssport.com - to which athletes, coaches and officials from New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States can upload "non-secret" information from conferences, competitions and research.
One thing about Dunedin was there were more ideas for sports technology than Sparc had money for, Mr Young said. However, the ideas in which Sparc invested were world leading.
Mr Taylor was preparing to demonstrate the yacht tracking technology at Weymouth, the yachting venue for the Olympics, but already Yachting NZ was calling for more developments on the product.
Television viewers were used to seeing the graphics from the America's Cup being broadcast through Mr Taylor's technology, but the new concept took the technology much further, Mr Young said.
The next stage, probably ready next year, would allow a more interactive display so coaches and scientists could interpret the data and help those on the yachts.
Analysis of wind conditions and how the yachtsman reacted to wind shifts had been in Mr Taylor's plans for a while.
The technology box for the America's Cup was large, but the second version was much smaller and that was being reduced by half again so every yacht could carry one, Mr Young said.
It was hoped every boat in every major regatta would carry one of the boxes so coaches could sit around after each race and analyse the data as they tried to improve the performance of the competitors.
"The investment is well into six figures but is worth it considering how much we put into yachting. Having ARL and Ian just down the road is an amazing benefit."
The Dunedin-developed iPhone app was being used by triathletes, but two other sports were about to sign up to use the technology.
Mr Young would not reveal which sports they were, but it was understood cycling and rowing were interested.
The app lets athletes and coaches use real-time data, no matter where they are in the world, to give and get real-time assessments of training.
The athlete puts in the data from training, recovery, eating, sleeping and more into the phone, which sends it back to the coach. A spread sheet from the data goes to scientists for analysis.
"You don't want the athletes to overtrain. Certain flags alert coaches their athletes are on the way down and they can step in."
Hopefully, enough data would soon be available to be analysed from enough athletes to help all of them to adapt to different conditions.
Officials from the All Blacks were interested in the work being done in Dunedin around the training app, he said.
Work was also being done on making the app available as multi-platform so it could work on any phone as the iPhone was expensive.
For Mr Young, the new website was an exciting development and one which could change the face of co-operation between countries wanting the best for their respective athletes.
At first, the website was going to be available only to New Zealand athletes, but Mr Young started to see wider connotations.
The idea for the collective sharing of non-secret sporting information came before the Beijing Olympics, when New Zealand was developing ice jackets to help athletes deal with the sweltering heat of a Chinese summer.
Everyone knew that many countries would be developing an ice jacket of their own and Mr Young thought that was duplication that could be avoided.
At the Olympics it was revealed that 12 countries had developed their own ice jackets. It was about how the ice jacket was used, not how it was made as most looked much the same, he said.
After the Olympics, Mr Young started expanding the site, making contact with people in lines of work similar to his and found a general acceptance of his concept.
As New Zealand was isolated from many of the world's major sporting events, it would also help to get some details of developments in each code.
Now a calendar on the site is being linked to global sporting events. An athlete can click on an event, get a Google map of directions, see who else is attending and what the course will be like.
Competition videos can easily be uploaded to the site with technology similar to that used by YouTube, along with race reports and research.
At last count nearly 1900 events were listed, and each day the list grew, Mr Young said.
"We want to make it as simple as possible - error-free and drag-and-drop. It's early days, but the platform is proving attractive to users."
Working on making the site as fast and robust as possible was being done in Dunedin with the help of Silicon Coach, Ocean Browser and Enabling Technology.
That grouping had applied to the Dunedin City Council for a grant to continue their collaboration.
The next project being talked about was creating a three-dimensional virtual Olympic experience for the athletes, he said.
Preparation had been under way for the virtualisation before Beijing, but the project was hampered by lack of time.
"Even if athletes are super skilled, the chances are they are unlikely to win at their first Olympics. We want to create it virtually, so the athletes have kind of been there.
"If we get the long-list team together and run things through from the haka to a virtual tour of the stadium and where they will be competing, it is sort of like their second time there when they arrive. The butterflies should be gone."
Mr Young was constantly surprised by the depth of technology developments in Dunedin. Before coming to New Zealand, he worked in a facility in Calgary, Canada, which was full of ADI instruments.
"I couldn't believe it when I got here and found ADI is just down the road."
Dunedin-based ADI specialised in medical and pharmaceutical equipment for data collection and analysis. Mr Young hoped to work with ADI owner Michael McKnight in the future.
