In Italy we practice almost 400 sports. It is a problem when, on the eve of the Olympic Games, we ask ourselves how many medals there are and whether it would be better, as other countries do, to focus on a limited number of sports. Seen with the eyes of one sportupper, the same figure is transformed, however, into a sea of opportunities: almost 400 markets available, niche, but not only.
The sportupper I’m the sporting evolution of startuppers: they are born with a strong passion for a discipline, which can also become a job; complete everything with the daily study that is part of the sporting DNA, in the form of workouts and studies of Preparation; they immediately have the world as a reference because sport is happily g-local, and perhaps they manage to exploit a genius loci, which can also arise from calendar opportunities.
A profession born from the passion for tennis
Andrea Candusso, from Turin, 44 years old, is the prototype of the sportupper: tennis teacher, but also expert in motor science, therefore with technical and physical knowledge, curious to the point of becoming stringer, a profession that few still recognize in Italy and that, on the other hand, he is already sought after abroad: 9 years ago he made the leap represented, as for many, by the opening of the VAT number. And today, with Turin preparing to become the world capital of tennis with the ATP Finals, the tournament with the best players of the year, and with the Davis Cup, Candusso can present his “biomechanical revolution” by putting himself alongside Albert Einstein on the cover.
It’s a game, but not so much, because Andrea’s formula, + o -7 = 15km/h, the theory of relativity is valid: “The rackets leave the factory with 7 grams more or less of weight that are worth 15 km – he explained – I have to balance the situation: a micro overload, repeated many times, can lead to accidents. My work is also valid for prevention “. Then, the icing on the cake, we need the so-called poster boy, a young talent with many years ahead, a digital native what it takes to understand how to navigate and not drown in that sea of data that every sportsman produces today: it is Jannik Sinner, a predestined in the midst of as many Italian tennis players among the best in the world as we have ever had.
Twenty years to go, 188 centimeters tall (3 more than Federer and Nadal), South Tyrolean with great character who moved to the Riviera to stay close to maestro Riccardo Piatti, Sinner came to the test with Candusso with the natural curiosity of a boy of his age, but also with the certainties of a player who is forging ahead. Yet in just one hour, obviously preceded by considerations on all the data already available, the Hyper Tennis team changed its racket by increasing by 5.13% acceleration of the right, which gained 1.5 km / h of speed; the acceleration of the reverse has even increased by 7.5%, translated into almost 9 km / h of greater speed of the blow. Finally, the service became faster than 3 km / h thanks to an acceleration of 2%.
Data that must not be weighed only with the speed meter that is now available on all fields, but also and above all with the relative gain in terms of cleaning the shots. The latter end with burden less on the body with all the repetitions imposed by a match. To Sinner, but also to the fifty-year-old who plays in the sports club dreaming of an improvement, Andrea Candusso offers certain data and a mix of past and future: on the one hand, the traditional work on the fields – specifically those of the Circolo della Stampa of Turin which become Labs. and hub as well – with the expert eye of the classic tennis teacher. On the other hand, a work team in which there are biomechanics specialized in the study of movements and innovation of materials.
The technique behind accelerations
Each technical gesture carried out in the field is analyzed and video analyzed to understand where and how to intervene: Hyperstrings for example, activity related only to a part of the racket and that however gives the name to the whole project, customize the choice of strings. Then we move on to the racket, transformed thanks to the sportsdata of which Turin was already a capital thanks to Delta3.
Today Candusso moves a team of technicians: “Ten years ago there was no talk of artificial intelligence, I instead thought it was time to combine physical knowledge with specific knowledge. Engineering applied to movement “. The data recorded are many, and obviously personal: the speed with which the ball is hit, the accelerations, the management times of the movements. Artificial intelligence is not only used to improve the product, but also to perfect the technical gesture: “The point of arrival – explains Candusso – is to be able to develop algorithms to build intelligent analyzes”.
It sportupper he knows he does not have an easy life, perhaps he chooses it precisely for this reason: “It is not easy in Italy to carry out a project as a team”, confesses Candusso, who not surprisingly boasts among the titles that of official tuner of the Kazakh national team, but it is the evolution of sport that works for the benefit of a company like Hyperstrings. Born late, perhaps, for intercept Roger Federer, but happily contemporary of the blue hyper tennis which translates not only into results, but also in an impetuous growth of practitioners. You have to know how to recognize a market to attend it: as on the tennis court, certain moments cannot be recognized with the naked eye.
We need the shots, the data, we must know the theories of each movement to improve the practice: “It is a new frontier – is Candusso’s reflection – not to depersonalize the game, but for its natural evolution based on precise numbers”. As they say in Grand Slam tournaments like the Roland Garros: game, set and match.
.