自然段A

They play hard, they play often, and they play to win. Australian sports teams win more than their fair share of titles, demolishing rivals with seeming ease. How do they do it? A big part of the secret is an extensive and expensive network of sporting academies underpinned by science and medicine. At the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), hundreds of youngsters and pros live and train under the eyes of coaches. Another body, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC), finances programmes of excellence in a total of 96 sports for thousands of sportsmen and women. Both provide intensive coaching, training facilities and nutritional advice.

自然段A:

他们拼尽全力，经常比赛，为了赢而战。澳大利亚的体育队比其他国家赢得更多的冠军，似乎轻松地击败对手。他们的成功秘诀之一是建立在科学和医学基础上的广泛昂贵的体育学院网络。在澳大利亚体育学院（AIS），数百名年轻人和职业运动员在教练的监督下生活和训练。另一个机构，澳大利亚体育委员会（ASC），为数千名运动员在96个运动项目中提供卓越计划的资金支持。这两个机构提供密集的指导、训练设施和营养建议。

自然段B

Inside the academies, science takes centre stage. The AIS employs more than 100 sports scientists and doctors, and collaborates with scores of others in universities and research centres. AIS scientists work across a number of sports, applying skills learned in one – such as building muscle strength in golfers – to others, such as swimming and squash. They are backed up by technicians who design instruments to collect data from athletes. They all focus on one aim: winning. ‘We can’t waste our time looking at ethereal scientific questions that don’t help the coach work with an athlete and improve performance,’ says Peter Fricker, chief of science at AIS.

自然段B:

在这些学院内，科学处于核心位置。AIS雇佣了100多名体育科学家和医生，并与许多大学和研究中心合作。AIS的科学家在多个体育项目中工作，将在一个项目中学到的技能应用到其他项目中，例如在高尔夫球手身上增强肌肉力量的技术也可以应用于游泳和壁球等项目。他们的工作得到技术人员的支持，后者设计仪器来收集运动员的数据。他们所有人的目标都是一个：赢得比赛。“我们不能浪费时间探究与教练帮助运动员提高表现无关的那些虚幻科学问题，”AIS的科学主管Peter Fricker说道。

自然段C

A lot of their work comes down to measurement – everything from the exact angle of a swimmer’s dive to the second-by-second power output of a cyclist. This data is used to wring improvements out of athletes. The focus is on individuals, tweaking performances to squeeze an extra hundredth of a second here, an extra millimetre there. No gain is too slight to bother with. It’s the tiny, gradual improvements that add up to world-beating results. To demonstrate how the system works, Bruce Mason at AIS shows off the prototype of a 3D analysis tool for studying swimmers. A wire-frame model of a champion swimmer slices through the water, her arms moving in slow motion. Looking side-on, Mason measures the distance between strokes. From above, he analyses how her spine swivels. When fully developed, this system will enable him to build a biomechanical profile for coaches to use to help budding swimmers. Mason’s contribution to sport also includes the development of the SWAN (SWimming ANalysis)system now used in Australian national competitions. It collects images from digital cameras running at 50 frames a second and breaks down each part of a swimmer’s performance into factors that can be analysed individually – stroke length, stroke frequency, average duration of each stroke, velocity, start, lap and finish times, and so on. At the end of each race, SWAN spits out data on each swimmer

自然段C:

他们的很多工作涉及到测量，从游泳者的跳水角度到自行车运动每秒功率的精确测量。这些数据被用来改善运动员的表现。重点是个体，微调运动员的表现，争取在某个方面获得额外的百分之一秒或者更小的改进。没有任何进步微小到不值得处理。这些微小而逐渐的改进相加，造就了世界领先的成绩。为了展示这个系统是如何工作的，AIS的Bruce Mason展示了一款用于研究游泳运动员的三维分析工具的原型。一个冠军游泳者的线框模型在水中移动，她的手臂慢动作运动。从侧面观察，Mason测量摆动的距离。从上面看，他分析脊柱的旋转情况。当这个系统完善后，他将能够为教练们建立一个生物力学特征档案，以帮助有潜力的游泳运动员。Mason在体育方面的贡献还包括开发了目前在澳大利亚全国比赛中使用的SWAN（SWimming ANalysis）系统。该系统使用以每秒50帧运行的数码摄像机收集图像，并将游泳运动员的每个部分分解成可以单独分析的因素，包括划长、划频、每次划动的平均持续时间、速度、起跳、圈数和终点时间等。每场比赛结束时，SWAN都会提供每个游泳运动员的数据。

自然段D

‘Take a look,’ says Mason, pulling out a sheet of data. He points out the data on the swimmers in second and third place, which shows that the one who finished third actually swam faster. So why did he finish 35 hundredths of a second down? ‘His turn times were 44 hundredths of a second behind the other guy,’ says Mason. ‘If he can improve on his turns, he can do much better’ This is the kind of accuracy that AIS scientists’ research is bringing to a range of sports. With the Cooperative Research Centre for Micro Technology in Melbourne, they are developing unobtrusive sensors that will be embedded in an athlete’s clothes or running shoes to monitor heart rate, sweating, heat production or any other factor that might have an impact on an athlete’s ability to run. There’s more to it than simply measuring performance. Fricker gives the example of athletes who may be down with coughs and colds 11 or 12 times a year. After years of experimentation, AlS and the University of Newcastle in New South Wales developed a test that measures how much of the immune-system protein immunoglobulin A is present in athletes’ saliva. If IgA levels suddenly fall below a certain level, training is eased or dropped altogether. Soon, IgA levels start rising again, and the danger passes. Since the tests were introduced, AIS athletes in all sports have been remarkably successful at staying healthy.

自然段D:

“来看看吧，”Mason拿出一张数据表。他指出第二名和第三名游泳运动员的数据，显示第三名游泳运动员实际上游得更快。那么他为什么输了0.35秒？“他转身的时间比另一个人慢了0.44秒，”Mason说。“如果他能改善转身，他会取得更好的成绩。”这就是AIS科学家们的研究为各种运动带来的准确性。他们与墨尔本的微技术合作研究中心一起，正在开发不显眼的传感器，将嵌入到运动员的服装或跑鞋中，以监测心率、出汗情况、产热量或其他可能影响运动员跑步能力的因素。这并不仅仅是为了衡量表现。Fricker举例说明了那些每年可能遭受11或12次咳嗽和感冒的运动员。经过多年的实验研究，AIS和新南威尔士州的纽卡斯尔大学开发出一种检测运动员唾液中免疫系统蛋白质免疫球蛋白A含量的测试方法。如果免疫球蛋白A水平突然下降到一定水平以下，训练将减轻或完全停止。不久之后，免疫球蛋白A水平开始上升，危险就过去了。自从引入这些测试以来，所有运动项目中的AIS运动员在保持健康方面取得了显著的成功。

自然段E

Using data is a complex business. Well before a championship, sports scientists and coaches start to prepare the athlete by developing a ‘competition model’, based on what they expect will be the winning times. ‘You design the model to make that time,’ says Mason. ‘A start of this much, each free-swimming period has to be this fast, with a certain stroke frequency and stroke length, with turns done in these times.’ All the training is then geared towards making the athlete hit those targets, both overall and for each segment of the race. Techniques like these have transformed Australia into arguably the world’s most successful sporting nation.

自然段E:

使用数据是一个复杂的过程。在锦标赛之前很久，体育科学家和教练就开始通过制定“竞争模型”来准备运动员，该模型基于他们预计的获胜时间。“你设计这个模型来达到那个时间，”Mason说。“起跳这么多，每个自由游泳阶段必须达到这样的速度，有一定的划频和划长，转身需要在这个时间内完成。”然后所有的训练都是为了让运动员达到这些目标，无论是整体上还是在比赛的每个部分。这些技术改变了澳大利亚，使其成为世界上最成功的体育大国之一。

自然段F

Of course, there’s nothing to stop other countries copying-and many have tried. Some years ago, the AIS unveiled coolant-lined jackets for endurance athletes. At the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, these sliced as much as two per cent off cyclists’ and rowers’ times. Now everyone uses them. The same has happened to the ‘altitude tent’, developed by AIS to replicate the effect of altitude training at sea level. But Australia’s success story is about more than easily copied technological fixes, and up to now no nation has replicated its all-encompassing system.

自然段F:

当然，其他国家也可以模仿这些技术——许多国家已经尝试过。几年前，AIS推出了供耐力运动员使用的带冷却系统的夹克。在1996年的亚特兰大奥运会上，这样的夹克让自行车选手和划船运动员的成绩提高了多达2%。现在每个人都在使用它们。同样的情况也发生在“海拔帐篷”上，这个帐篷是AIS开发的，用于在海拔训练效果在海平面上进行复制。但澳大利亚的成功不仅仅是轻易被模仿的技术解决方案，迄今为止，没有任何国家能够复制他们的全方位体系。