The Science Behind Paige Madden’s Olympic Breakthrough in Paris

Courtesy: Dr Ken Ono & Will Tenpas

Wearable sensors are everywhere. Over half a million diabetics in North America alone wear a glucose monitor paired with an insulin pump to manage their condition, and millions more wear smartwatches and fitness trackers to record and monitor health-related metrics. The idea of wearable sensors in healthcare has gone from revolutionary to ubiquitous. And in sports, tools from sleep trackers to golf club swing speed monitors have moved from a niche to the norm. With World Aquatics allowing wearables in competition (as of January 2023), swimming is now on track to benefit from these technological breakthroughs as well.

Here we highlight the impact swimming’s new wearable – eo SwimBETTER – can have on a swimmer, an impact that contributed to one of the most impressive success stories out of a historic Paris Olympics.

While there was rampant speculation going into the 800m free, nearly all of it centered around the brewing battle between Ariarne Titmus and world record holder Katie Ledecky. Could Ledecky win her fourth gold in a row in the event, or would Titmus put a stop to her dominance?

At the start of the final, this speculation made sense. Ledecky and Titmus burst out to an early lead, while American Paige Madden flipped at the first 50m in an inauspicious sixth place, already a second behind Ledecky and Titmus. At the halfway point, Madden lurked in fifth, far from podium position. But suddenly and seemingly out of the blue, she surged into third at the 550m mark. Madden didn’t just make up ground on those battling for third – she closed in on the veteran Ledecky and Aussie superstar Titmus.

By 700m, Madden was in a strong position for a podium spot and ultimately finished in 8:13.00 – splitting an exact even 4:06.5/4:06.5 for the Olympic bronze medal. Her time secured her place as the fourth-fastest 800m performer of all time, behind the likes of Ledecky, Titmus, and Summer McIntosh. The highly anticipated showdown between Ledecky and Titmus lived up to the hype, with the American edging out the Aussie star for a fourth consecutive gold medal. For some of us, the race had a glorious ending, when the iconic Olympic champion invited her friend and teammate to share the top step on the podium for their national anthem.

Photo: Mike Lewis.

Much like her 800m, Madden did not start the Olympic Year with a bang. After failing to make the 2023 US team for Worlds in Fukuoka, she nearly retired from the sport, ultimately deciding to aim for a spot on her second US Olympic team.

She decided to do this at Arizona State University as a member of Bob Bowman and Herbie Behm’s pro group, while continuing to work with Dr. Ken Ono, a mathematician and performance analyst at the University of Virginia. Nine months before the U.S. Olympic Trials, Madden has a best time of 8:32 – a time that won’t just fail to medal but would’ve finished more than 12 seconds adrift of a US Olympic spot in 2021. So, she looked for change.

In the lead-up to the Olympic Trials, Madden began training with eo SwimBETTER. She is tested by Dr. Ono’s UVA based analytics group, and they identified multiple areas of opportunity, which (spoiler alert) ultimately helped her cut more than one second per lap in the 800m free. To find where she can be better, she raced a 200m free time trial wearing the eo SwimBETTER handsets.

Using eo SwimBETTER’s Stroke Path and Force Field data, the team observed the propulsive force of Madden’s left arm dropped by approximately 30% as she fatigued. The cause? Instead of pulling back, her catch turned almost entirely vertical, pushing the water downwards, instead of propelling her forwards.

While Madden has a nearly perfect stroke when not racing a competitor, the team recognized that Olympic races amplify stress, with the 800m free being a grueling eight-minute game of physical and mental chess.  So, they set up race simulations with a varsity D1 swimmer in fins to push Madden at critical points. The eo SwimBETTER data highlighted, that when challenged in intense competition, Madden’s arm started crossing over, resulting in her force going out to the left instead of in the forward propulsive direction. Video analysis linked this pattern to her breath and her arms having to compensate for a lack of body rotation and looking at her competitor. Correcting this tendency had the potential to result in huge time drops.

With eo SwimBETTER’s insights, Madden retested the following day under the same circumstances and was able to vastly improve her numbers in just 24 hours, going from losing ~30% of her power to actually gaining propulsive power as the race went on.

Madden said, “When I first saw the eo SwimBETTER data, I was honestly shocked. I didn’t feel like my arm was crossing over, but it’s so obvious and the data doesn’t lie. Once those inefficiencies were pointed out, I could focus my training exactly where it mattered. Within days, I was seeing improvement, and over time, it completely transformed my performance.”

Over the next two months, Madden worked hard to ingrain the adjustments so that come race day she was ready. While she was perfectly capable of making the adjustments, she would have had no idea to target those specific areas of her technique without eo SwimBETTER highlighting these inefficiencies. Even precise video could not identify the subtle changes that an athlete as elite as Paige needed to make. Furthermore, these tests played an important role in devising her race strategy for the 800m – trying, and succeeding, to even split the race with newfound faith that she would catch many of the other Olympians who leapt out ahead of her in the opening laps.

The results of these changes speak for themselves.

Paige Madden with Dr Ken Ono after the 4×200 freestyle relay medal ceremony in Paris.

About the Authors:

Ken Ono is the STEM Advisor to the Provost and the Marvin Rosenblum Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia. He is also a professor by courtesy of data science and a professor affiliate in statistics. In the 1980s he raced bicycles, and from 2012-2014 he competed as a member of age group Team USA in triathlon. He has served as a consultant for dozens of US National Team members and Olympic medalists.

Will Tenpas recently completed a master’s degree in data science at the University of Virginia. He graduated from Duke University with a B.S.E. in mechanical engineering in 2023, where he was also a four-year member of the varsity swim team and two-time captain.