Mantel was chosen as a trusted partner to evolve Swimming Australia’s Training Insights platform. The aim of this multi-stage partnership is to bring sophisticated analytics, previously limited to competitions, into daily training. Ultimately, this move positions Swimming Australia at the forefront of technological innovation in elite sport and paves the way for Olympic success.
How Swimming Australia and Mantel are leveraging AI for Olympic Success
Targeting the top of the medal table at the LA 2028 Olympic Games
Swimming Australia has a bold vision to lead Olympic swimming at the LA 2028 and Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games, when the Olympics return to Australia. With a history of strong Olympic performances, including seven gold medals at the recent Paris Games – just one away from matching the USA – Swimming Australia is now focused on reaching the pinnacle at the LA 2028 Summer Olympic Games.
Swimming Australia aims to become the “F1 of swimming” by pioneering advanced, data-driven insights in training and competition, and using technology, powered by investment in AI, to unlock every possible competitive advantage.
A rich history in the pool
Without a doubt, swimming is Australia’s most successful Olympic sport. Of Australia’s 135 Olympic gold medals, 58 were earned by swimmers, making it the second-highest tally in the sport, behind only the United States. It’s a common sight to see parents pull up at the local pool as early as 5:30 am, dropping off bleary-eyed kids for a few hours of training before school starts. Australia has a history of consistently producing world-class swimmers who dominate on the global stage; think such names as Dawn Fraser, Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Emma McKeon and Ariane Titmus.
Paving the way for Training Insights
In elite swimming, victory is measured in fractions of a second. Having already pioneered advanced analytics for race-day performance, Swimming Australia identified its next frontier: the training pool. While competitions were meticulously tracked, the complex and dynamic environment of daily training represented a vast, untapped source of data and insights. To unlock this high-performance potential, Swimming Australia partnered with Mantel to engineer the next generation of its Training Insights platform
To unlock this high-performance potential, Swimming Australia partnered with Mantel and AWS to engineer the next generation of its Training Insights platform.
High-performance meets high-tech
Swimming Australia engaged Mantel as its Data and AI Delivery Partner to evolve the Training Insights platform ahead of the LA 2028 games. Our mission is twofold: to build a game-changing AI solution that provides a real-time, data-driven edge, and to empower Swimming Australia to accelerate its technology ambitions independently.
Together, we established an integrated team, embedding our data and AI experts directly within Swimming Australia. This “one team” approach ensures the solutions we build are not just technically excellent, but are forged from the deep domain expertise of coaches and performance analysts who live and breathe the sport. A core measure of success is not just delivering a platform, but building Swimming Australia’s internal capability, ensuring they can innovate, adapt, and drive their high-performance tech for years to come.
“Training Insights will accurately link what happens in the training pool to competition performance, enabling real-time feedback to coaches and athletes, identifying trends, strengths, and opportunities for improvement earlier, individualising support, and helping athletes and coaches make faster decisions. This moves beyond observation to actual influence: understanding how training, competition performance, and execution interact in real time, and being able to adjust the environment around the athlete proactively. Training Insights will help us close the gap between preparation and performance, ensuring every training session contributes to the bigger performance picture”.
Jess Corones
Head of Performance Insights, Swimming Australia
“I was amazed at how fast the system was. Even after a short demo, I can clearly see how, in the future, this will allow me to stay focused on coaching, knowing the athletes will still receive their information in real time. As this develops, it’ll take the pressure off providing the ‘numbers’ myself and let me watch more, be in the moment, and truly coach; it was like having an assistant coach right next to me.”
Kate Sparkes
SASI Assistant Coach / AIS Gen32 Coach
“We chose Mantel as our partner of choice to make Training Insights a reality. Their knowledge and areas of expertise in Data, AI & Cloud have really transformed our team capability and are helping to drive projects like Training Insights into impactful performance tools for our coaches.”
Ian Morrow
GM Performance Insights & Technology
Building the Formula 1 garage for swimming
Together, Mantel and Swimming Australia are building the Training Insights platform – a poolside insights engine, powered by AI, that captures and analyses training session data in real-time. Where coaches once relied on the stopwatch and the naked eye, we are delivering a system that uses computer vision to track multiple athletes simultaneously, capturing thousands of data points per second.
From stroke rate and velocity to turn speed, the platform will provide coaches and athletes with immediate, actionable feedback. This allows precise technical adjustments to be made during a session, fundamentally changing the training dynamic. The solution leverages a single, high-angle camera and an ensemble of machine learning models, with an edge-designed system that ensures performance and scalability across multiple training venues. The evolution of Training Insights represents a significant leap forward and provides a foundation for continued innovation.
The foundation for future gold
This platform is more than a tool; it is the foundation of Swimming Australia’s long-term vision. It provides a sustainable and scalable competitive advantage that will fuel the journey to LA 2028, Brisbane 2032, and beyond.
The partnership between Mantel, AWS and Swimming Australia showcases what’s possible when leaders in their respective fields unite behind an ambitious goal. Together, we aren’t just building technology; we are engineering the future of high-performance swimming.
“We are proud to partner with Swimming Australia to drive innovation in high-performance swimming. Using the latest advances in machine learning and AI, we have enabled coaches and athletes to unlock incremental performance gains. Our team is energised by what we have achieved together, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration in the pursuit of Olympic gold.”
Jonathan HardyPrincipal AI Consultant, Mantel
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