Sports Engineering - new realities of modern sport

ˑ: 

Dr.Biol., Ph.D. B.A. Dyshko1
Ph.D. V.E. Vasyuk2
1Vice-president of Sports Engineering Association, Moscow
2Belarusian National Technical University (BNTU), Minsk, Belarus

 

Keywords: sports engineering, maintenance of sports facilities and competitions, technical devices in sport, athletes’ testing, research in sport.
 

Introduction. Modern sport is impossible without using modern technologies. The higher the skill level, the more complex and advanced the means and methods of training athletes and controlling their fitness level are. New requirements to competitions and training facilities have been put forward in modern sport. New equipment requires specially trained engineers carrying out sports equipment maintenance. A new professional specialization of engineers came into being - engineer of sports [1, 2].

In the academic dictionary http://en.academic.ru/ sports engineering is described as «…engineering activity related to design, development, production, testing and use of equipment for sport, in accordance with the level of knowledge about sport and technology development».

The purpose of the study was to provide the substantiation of the need to develop sports engineering in Russia and in the CIS countries.

Methods of the research: historical analysis of sports engineering in the world, Russia and the CIS countries, prospective analysis of development of sports engineering in the CIS countries.
Research results and discussion. High results shown by our traditional competitors in the last decades largely depend on the level of «equipment provision» for the training process and, accordingly, on the professionalism of the people carrying out maintenance of this equipment, that is, sports engineers. 

As an engineering specialization «sports engineering» was first announced in the UK in 1998, when a Sports Engineering Research Group was established at the University of Sheffield and the International Sports Engineering Association (ISEA) was founded [1-3].

Currently, there are over 100 national associations, universities and companies from all over the world in the ISEA [6].

Specialists in Sports Engineering are trained and awarded master’s and PhD degrees in such educational institutions as Sheffield Hallam University and University of Strathclyde (UK), University of Adelaide and Victoria University (Australia), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), University of Applied Sciences Technikum (Austria), Technische Universität München (Germany), University of Southern Mississippi and Washington State University (USA), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), and others [6].

The situation in Russia and the CIS countries is somewhat different. For example, in Russia «sports engineering» came into being in 1998, after the participation of Russian scientists in the 2nd International Symposium of ISEA in Sheffield [1, 4]. However, the financial crisis that occurred in the same year postponed the announcement of “sports engineering” by several years. Only in 2002 the non-profit public organization “Association of Sports Engineering” (ASI) was registered in Moscow, its members being companies with operations related to sports and recreational activities, including sports facilities construction.  

The Association of Sports Engineering works with the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia within the framework of the program “Creating conditions for increasing the efficiency of the regulatory impact of socially-oriented non-profit organizations in the field of physical culture and sport using technical regulation mechanisms”. 

Currently, ASI brings together over 90 companies, is involved in the standardization of sports equipment and machinery, certification of sports facilities [5].

Development of material and technical facilities of the physical culture and sports industry conditioned the involvement of qualified engineering staff possessing the technologies of development, creation and maintenance of technical devices used in modern sport. Involving engineers of technical specializations who do not know the specifics of modern sport, the essence of the processes of sports equipment installation, could not be effective and productive.  

To solve this problem, in Belarusian National Technical University (BNTU), the first institution of higher education in the post-Soviet territory, a department of “Sports Engineering” was created in 2010, which undertook training of future professionals in such fields as “Technical Maintenance of Sports Facilities”, “Design and manufacturing of sports equipment” [7]. Starting from 2016 a Master’s degree program in “Technical arrangements for physical culture and sport” is being launched, and starting 2017 the same scientific specialization will become available for graduate and doctoral students who will have an opportunity to write and defend their Ph.D. and doctoral theses in the field of technical and pedagogical sciences [8]. 

Currently, citizens from different parts of Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan also come to study on the Sports and Technical Faculty of BNTU.

The results of the analysis of the history of sports engineering development in the world indicate that we are once again in the role of “catching up” ones. They realized it much earlier abroad that the “maintenance” of modern sports facilities as well as the modern process of training of sports reserves and professional athletes are inextricably connected to the training and use of highly qualified and highly specialized professionals – sport engineers [2, 3, 6].  At the same time the activities of the Association of Sports Engineering and opening of the Sports and Technical Faculty in Belarusian National Technical University give us hope that this gap will be eliminated in the nearest future. 

In 2014 there was a meeting of the management of ASI and the Sports Engineering Department of BNTU, where a decision about cooperation was made. In accordance with the agreed program ASI sends its specialists to teach the students of the faculty. The Association of Sports Engineering and the Sports Engineering Department of BNTU invite to cooperation organizations interested in the development of sports engineering. 

Conclusions

  1. The improvement of the elite and skilled athletes' training process is impossible without using high-tech equipment. Highly skilled and specialized technical personnel - sport engineers are required for development and operation of this equipment.
  2. Today modern multifunctional sports and cultural complexes cannot operate without skilled staff that has gone through specialized engineering training, without knowledge of economic and management methods, without using methods of the information technology.
  3. Currently, the USA, the UK, Japan and the EU countries are at the forefront in sports engineering.
  4. Joint activities of the Sports Engineering Association (Russia) and sports­ technical faculty of Belarusian National Technical University will help solve the problem of technical expert training in all areas of sports and physical culture on the modern international level.

References

  1. Dyshko, B.A. Sportivny inzhiniring nabiraet oboroty (Sports Engineering is growing) / B.A. Dyshko // Teoriya i praktika fizicheskoy kul’tury. – 2003. – № 4. – P. 63.
  2. Regional’noe razvitie gosudarstvennoy politiki v oblasti fizicheskoy kul’tury i sporta (Regional development of state policy in the sphere of physical culture and sport). Source – http://refleader.ru/qasbewujgqas.html
  3. Haake, S.J., (ed) (1996), The Engineering of Sport, Balkema, pp. 343.
  4. Haake. S.J. (ed) (1998). The Engineering of Sport – Design and Development, Blackwell Science, pp 576.
  5. Website http://asisport.su/
  6. Website www.sportsengineering.org
  7. Website http://www.bntu.by/stf.html
  8. Website http://www.vak.org.by

 

Corresponding author: sporttec@yandex.ru