2017 Las Vegas Monster Energy Cup
What happens in Vegas certainly shouldn’t stay there. AmI right?
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to Sin City forthe 2017 Supercross Monster Energy Cup hosted by production conglomerate FeldEntertainment Inc. They spent time going over the sport and the lay of the landexplaining that the track was designed by five-time Supercross champ RickyCarmichael. They also introduced a new biometric reading technology created by sportingtech company LITPro into the series that was being tested only by a handful oftrackside athletes.
This definitely sparked my attention.
How can professional Supercross athletes and race teamsinfluence the everyday health-oholic or even those who are wanting to step uptheir fitness game? This piece of equipment is definitely a step toward thatdirection.
The LITPro device was tested on specific athletes tomonitor heartrate, speed and percentage of laps completed during each race. Oneof the athletes this was tested on was Red Bull and KTM Racing rider MarvinMusquin who ended up securing the second-ever Monster Energy Cup $1M prize –now known as the “Musquin Million.”
Throughout the three Main Event feat, racers were driving(pun intended) for this prize that was first won by Ryan Villopoto in 2011 –Monster Energy Cup’s debut with this contingency prize as well as one of thelargest cash payouts in the sporting community.
As Musquin and other athletes geared up to head intocompetition to win the million, LITPro was there measuring how the athletes wereperforming and reacting to the pressure of the race. This type of technology wasdesigned to influence how athletes train by allowing them to enhance theirperformance through analytical study.
“We started with reinventing GPS for Motocross and otherhigh-speed, high change in position sports. So, we’ve focused most of ourdevelopment on reinventing how GPS is enabled and added a bunch of othersensors to look at air time, corner analytics, basically anything an athletecould use to shave anything from a tenth of a second, at this level, to tenseconds for someone who is a beginner,” said Michael Ford, President andFounder of LITPro.
Basically, this monitoring system is designed to givelive-time feedback on performance through biometric readings to trainers andathletes giving them the tools to see how they can improve lap times based oninternal adjustments – breathing patterns, mental acuity, etc. This, in turn,will help athletes train for the professional races on and off the racetrack.It will also allow newcomers to the sport, and other cycle-inspireddisciplines, find their pace to perform under pressure.
Not coming from a Supercross background, it wasinteresting to see the technology side and what it takes to actually train andperform like one of these pros. Also, I noticed that the lifestyle and passionthat was radiating, not only from the internals but from the racers but fansand all who were watching for the first time was something that could not bematched in the Vegas air.
“The reaction to Monster Energy Supercross isextraordinary because it is made for today,” said Kenneth Feld, CEO of FeldEntertainment Inc. “The Main Events are 20-minutes and it’s fast, it’s nonstopaction, and the athletes are probably the best trained athletes in the world.Their heartrate is somewhere close to 200bpm at the starting gate, theadrenaline from that. These young people are really focused on what they’redoing and after you walk the track [what we were doing as I spoke to Feld], youget a real appreciation for what they’re doing when they’re traveling at50mph.”
He was right. The amount of adrenaline that must bepumping through these athletes, I can imagine, would be astronomical due to theruts and divots on the track, as well as the pressure to perform at the qualitythat they do. My adrenaline was pumping and I was just walking around it tryingnot to fall face-first and ruin my kicks.
Follow the Supercross series by visiting their website or going trackside to mingle with the athletes at one of the stops on the tour.
Follow Shaun Melady on Instagram at @ShaunMelady.