USA Cycling’s Senior Data Analyst Ryan Cooper joins us to talk about Project 4:05, the quest to win the women’s track cycling team pursuit gold medal at Paris 2024.
At these Olympics, the Germans were the defending Olympic champions, and the Brits were the reigning world champions. The U.S. team of Jennifer Valente, Lily Williams, Chloe Dygert and Kristen Faulkner, was deemed an outlier at best, but they had a plan.
That plan was Project 4:05, a plan devised by USA Cycling’s Ryan Cooper, who used a whole swath of data analytics tools including machine learning and real-time analytics to optimize rider selection, race strategy and aerodynamic efficiency. If all went according to plan, they could top the podium with a time of 4:05. The team did better than that–they ousted Team GB in the semis and then smoked New Zealand in the finals to win gold with a time of 4:04.302.
We talked with USA Cycling’s Ryan Cooper, the man behind Project 4:05, to find out its origins, what the process was and how they executed it. That involved ousting Great Britain in the semifinals, and trouncing New Zealand in the finals.
We interviewed Ryan at the beginning of March 2025, after he and Project 4:05 had been nominated for the Franz Edelman Award, which is like the Nobel prize for operations research. His fellow nominees were giants in the field: Amazon, Flipkart, Lufthansa, SF Express and WM (Waste Management), and yet Ryan’s work beat them all – USA Cycling was named the 2025 Edelman winner on April 8, so this interview reflects his thoughts pre-win. Needless to say, USA Cycling is thrilled about this honor.
In Milano Cortina 2026 news, we have updates on ticket sales, volunteers, sneakers and the construction of Arena Santa Giulia, the new ice hockey stadium. International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons also has high hopes for improved accessibility.
In news from TKFLASTAN, we hear from Alison Levine, Kim Rhode and Dick Pound.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Photo credit: INFORMS
TRANSCRIPT
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387-Ryan Cooper on USA Cycling’s Project 4:05
Jill Jaracz: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics.
If you love the games, we are the show for you. I am your host Jill Jaracz joined, as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello, how are you?
Alison Brown: So, you know how I’m always saying don’t let me near weapons, like when we talk to the fencers or we talked to the shooters, what happened? There’s a reason for that.
I don’t know if you can see the giant bandage on my car. What did you do? I made cookies. Okay, so I’m not even safe in my own kitchen. So no. Probably as much as I would love to try ski jumping and learning how to ride a bicycle, clearly, probably not a good idea.
Jill Jaracz: Okay, so what happened? Was that a burn? Was it a, was a spatial a?
Oh, no, that’s a burn. You know, that happens. That happens. It’s not just you.
Alison Brown: Plenty of burns. Yeah, it’s acro it. I, you cannot, I’m not sure. You can’t see how big this is. It was ridiculous. It was a cookie accident. Were the cookies good? Cookies were really good.
Jill Jaracz: Well, you know, you had to take one for the team sometimes.
I guess.
I’m guessing you needed a recipe for your cookies.
Alison Brown: I do. You never, you get that from a book. I can never cook without a recipe.
Jill Jaracz: Alright, well you needed a book and guess what? World Book Day was this week. So if you are interested in books on the Olympics and Paralympics, we have got some great selections over@ourbookshop.org storefront.
Any purchases made through our storefront may help a certain commissions which go toward getting us to Milan for the games next year. End with the. Lowering of the dollar. This trip is getting more expensive by the day. You’re in the market for books, please go to bookshop.org/shop/flame live pod to shop today.
Alison Brown: And that supports independent bookstores as well as us.
Ryan Cooper on USA Cycling’s Project 4:05
Jill Jaracz: Today, oh my gosh, I am so excited about this interview. It is so up your alley. We are talking track cycling today, specifically the Women’s Team Pursuit event at Paris 2024. The Germans were the Defending Olympic champions, and the Brits were the reigning world champions.
The US team of Jennifer Volante, Lily Williams, Chloe Dyer, and Kristen Faulkner was deemed an outlier at best. But they had a plan. That plan was project 4 0 5, A plan devised by USA Cycling’s Ryan Cooper, who used a whole swath of data analytics tools, including machine learning and realtime analytics to optimize rider selection, race strategy, and aerodynamic efficiency.
If all went according to Ryan’s plan, they could top the podium with a time of 4 0 5. The team did better than that. They ous a teen GB in the semis and then smoked New Zealand in the finals to win gold with a time of 4 0 4 0.302. We talked with USA Cyclings, Ryan Cooper, the man behind the plan to find out its origins, what the process was and how they executed it.
We interviewed him on March 3rd, 2025. Just after he had been nominated for the France Edelman Award, which is kind of like the Nobel Prize for Operations Research, his fellow nominees were giants in the field. Amazon Flip Cart, Lufthansa fx, SF Express, and wm, which you might know as Waste Management. And yet Ryan’s work beat them all.
He won the gold just like his team. He did. Uh, USA cycling was named the 2025 Edelman winner on April 8th. So this interview reflexes thoughts pre win, needless to say U, USA cycling is thrilled about this honor. Yes, am I got, I have tears thinking about it. I’m so excited and happy for him and USA cycling for all that they did to put into this project.
And just the unique way that countries are using data and trying to find whatever edge they can, wherever they can in a, legal way to, uh, help teams excel. Uh, so one final note. Ryan talks about how Team GB cycling has a ton of funding. Team B announced funding for 2028, and that is just under 39 million pounds for cycling.
30 of that is going to the Olympics. Nine is for the Paralympics. That will be all cycling disciplines, uh, road track, BMX, and mountain bike. And that’s just their LA 2028 spending. USA cycling’s funds slightly less than that In 2023 USA cycling spent about $17 million on everything that the organization does.
So, with a, an incredible budgetary disadvantage team, USA really won big with this project, and let’s listen to Ryan tell us all about it. Take a listen.
How Ryan Cooper got into cycling data analytics
Ryan Cooper, thank you so much for joining us. When did you get interested in harnessing data for cycling?
Ryan Cooper: that’s a great question. Actually, if I go back, this is probably 2000, 2006, 2007. I just started my master’s program in operations research and I was working at a small defense kind of startup and working on all kinds of different projects.
But, we were a small group. I just moved back to Dallas and I was trying to train for Ironman triathlon at the same time as doing full-time work and trying to go back to school. and trying to train at a, a decent level, so kind of at like a amateur, competitive, amateur level. And I thought, well, I’m gonna get a coach and I’m gonna, I’m gonna have this coach and everything’s gonna work out great.
But span of control, this coach had, I don’t know, probably 20 other clients or something like that, and they just couldn’t. Keep track of my schedule. So I was traveling a lot and I didn’t have access to a bike all the time. I didn’t have access to a pool all the time. And so I said, well, why don’t I just use some of this knowledge and operation research and, and kind of applied math or like this optimization type math to build a schedule around my, a training schedule around my work, around my school.
around kind of my strengths and weaknesses. And so I built this math model, kind of around all of those things. And that was kind of the first, first foray into, um, using data in a endurance sports type of capacity. that dovetailed into a small company called Optimized Training Labs, which I launched with a buddy.
And to get kind of, um, like a, a marketing push for that, we created a separate service called Best Bike Split, which tried to give optimal pacing strategies to cyclists and to triathletes. So give your power profile. A course will break the course down by direction, by different direction changes and elevation changes.
And we’ll say, how much power should you output at every part of the course to get your fastest time for your given capabilities? And originally that was supposed to be kind of this marketing thing to get ’em into the training, but that took off much, much faster than the kind of AI training kind of thing or the smart training thing.
and if I step back and think about it a little bit, I go, oh, okay. Well, a bunch of coaches wanted to use it. Athletes wanted to use it, so we’re not competing against coaches. It was, it was a tool everybody could use. and it was a tool that that really wasn’t out there, on the market.
So, um, around 2012 we launched that and so that was kind of the first real, use of applied math data analytics, for like this prescriptive type of modeling.
Jill Jaracz: So obviously that kind of thinking took off then in a way.
Ryan Cooper: It did. It was, um, we launched in, I think at the end of 2012, and by 2000, end of 2013, Trek factory racing had reached out and they had this model, That, uh, a person, Paul, harder, I, I don’t know if he’s still at Trek or not, but they had a internal model that they were using, and I don’t know if it was built in MATLAB or, or, or how they built it internally, but one of the, the things that we wanted to do is we were gonna take our model and their model.
We we’re gonna do this big comparison, like comparative analysis. It was really fun because we, we used all the same inputs and so we had a specific course we were gonna use and wind data that we were gonna use and, and kind of do the comparison. And, and sure enough, we ran all the data through it and the models came out almost identical.
So same kind of strategy, same, same estimated time for this particular athlete. And so. Everything that was, was coming out, and it was exactly as, as they kind of expected it to. The difference was that ours took like 0.2 seconds to run and theirs took six hours to run and so, It was kind of the like light bulb moment that that went off.
That goes, okay, now we have something that, you could run every potential scenario that they want to run. Any wind direction, any wind amp, you know, any kind of wind speed that they wanted to run. any variation of those type of things or athlete CDA or like aerodynamics that they wanted to look at And do it in a fraction of the, the time that they had previously. So for the 2014 tour, uh, we ended up going out for the 2014 tour and helping, there was only one, one time trial, at that particular, year, but we went out in further and tested and, and ran, simulations, with Trek for that tour.
And so it was really fun, by the end of that year. Training Peaks had acquired us. it was an interesting story, but they, um, we were using some, some of the, I guess variables or, uh, TSS training, stress score, or normalized power, some of the, the kind of training peaks. Proprietary variables. so, or copyrighted variables. And so we got a call saying, Hey, you’re using our copyrighted stuff. And then I was like, uh oh. but it was really fun ’cause he’s like, well, you know, don’t worry about that. You just have to sign this thing. It’s, you know, it’s open. You just have to sign and give us attri, you know, attribution for it.
so we did that. And he said, but well, I’ve got you on the phone. This is Gear Fisher, one of the. founders and CEO at the time said, why have you on the phone? Would you guys like to come up and, and meet? We’d love to talk to you about, the app. And so we flew up there and several months later, they did a acquisition and we became part of Training Peaks.
And then I spent seven years at Training Peaks in various roles.
USA Cycling comes calling
Alison Brown: So when does USA cycling come calling?
Ryan Cooper: Yep. So, after seven years, uh, at training peaks, we did some really fun stuff. I left and I went to Amazon for a couple years and kinda learned how the, the big, big companies do things.
very interesting learning experience. they kind of say, A friend of mine worked at Amazon for. I wanna say five or six years. And he came to my birthday and I, I told him about this offer and he said, you know, whether you worked there for six months or six years, it’s worth it just to kind of get this experience and see what it’s like.
And so I ended up going there and it was about a year in when Jim Miller, chief of Sports performance at USA cycling, and I were talking and he, he started to tell me, and this is before it was 2023, this is before Glasgow, uh, the Super World Championship in Glasgow.
And he said USA cycling was really starting to put an emphasis on data. and what I call is. We have a, a lower budget than some of these teams like British cycling that have a, i I don’t know if everybody saw it announced after Paris, but a very, very large, uh, budget set aside for la.
and so we have to, as USA cycling, have to have a very outsized IROI. So we have to have a very big return on our investment and we do that through strategic. You know, initiatives and one of the strategic initiatives is tech and innovation. And Jim was stressing that we were gonna build out, kind of this top down view of data and data analytics and tactical modeling.
And so if you think about a top down view of a strategic level where you look at. Where do we think, uh, we have the best shot at winning medals? Where do we think, uh, we can grow the best talent? Where do we have crossover talent? So those kind of tactical level decisions or sorry, uh, strategic level decisions.
And then in those disciplines, you start to break down the tactical level kind of modeling. So if you, you think about time trail for instance, and if I look back at best bike split, you can say, okay, we’re going to. Look at this course, and we’re gonna break down this course and the aerodynamics and the power requirements of this specific course and the athletes we have, and say how do we best, ride this specific course, whether it’s in Paris or or in la for 28 other disciplines, we say, where can we, maybe we haven’t performed as well, but we know we have the talent and we know we have the athletes.
But we’re missing some key ingredients. And can we do through data, through crossover athletes. So Kristen Faulkner, for instance, coming over the track, or even testing other athletes coming over from mountain bike or from other disciplines that still meet the kind of characteristics that we’re looking for.
Where we can have an outsized, return on those kind of investments that we’re looking at. So, that’s where, where the kind of pitch came from, Jim, is to say, I could come in and, and really help spearhead this analytics group and what we’re trying to, trying to build here. As fun as Amazon is and getting all the packages to all the people as fast as possible, which is a fun, challenging problem.
it’s not quite as fun as, uh, gold medals,
Alison Brown: you’re not gonna get argument from us on that one. So
Ryan Cooper: yeah, I still get all the packages. They still all come to the front door, but yeah.
USA Cycling’s initial medal hopes for Paris 2024
Jill Jaracz: So for the US what was actually happening for them in the sport is they’re close to medals, but not necessarily getting them.
Ryan Cooper: Yeah. If we look at Tokyo, you know, we, we had three medals in Tokyo. This was before, before I came on board, and Covid really did a number. so both on, in terms of funding and just events went to nothing. staffing levels were very low. and so we kinda limped through those games. came up with three medals.
The goal going in, to Paris was pretty, pretty high. So internally, we had projected seven medals. and so part of our internal tracking is, we have these. Kind of metal expectancy, um, models that we do. So, U-S-O-P-C also does this, so the US Olympic and Paralympic committee has this ongoing tracking, metal tracking.
So we take that, that’s across all sports and all NGBs. So we layer in our expert knowledge and, and kind of do a, a finer grain, metal expectancy. And so we have What we consider high, probability medals, and then we have kind of on the fence, metals and our, our conversion medals.
And those are the ones that we really, try and focus on. So if if you look at historic high probability medals, we look at things like BMX freestyle, where we have two very strong athletes, on the women’s side, and then some, some strong athletes on the men’s side as well. We look at time trial, where Chloe is, is typically a very strong, um, athlete, especially, if she’s healthy going in, or omnium n in the track.
And so those are our medals that we kind of put into this, like, high probability or, or, kind of high confidence bucket. Then the conversion metals we look at areas where we’re on the edge in terms of probability, we’re in the top three or the top six. but there’s a low, if we think about like a low, clustering of probability.
So no, no team or no individual jumps out as being so much stronger than anybody else. And so there’s a couple of events that fit into that bucket For this last Olympic cycle, Madison is one of those where we thought we might be able to sneak out at medal. We ended up in fourth, right?
And so it’s one of those where, where the conversion didn’t end up on our side. whereas team pursuit, obviously the conversion did end up on our side. and that’s where, where we spend a lot of focus on, because we thought. For that particular discipline that there’s so much strategy involved and there’s so much that you can model out and that it’s not as variable.
So if you look at BMX race, there’s so many things that can go wrong and it’s it’s not so cut and dry. Whereas something like team pursuit. The variables are, you can model everything and, and you can kind of go in with some amount of confidence. Now on the day, anything can happen, but, it’s a lot more controllable than something like BMX race or BMX freestyle or Madison or something where there’s a lot of complexities to it.
Why Project 4:05?
Jill Jaracz: Why was 4 0 5 the magic time?
Ryan Cooper: So yeah. 4 0 5. this is something that’s interesting. This is something from my Amazon days they have a working backwards approach, so you, you look at the end result and then you work backwards. And so for this one. What we did is say, what do we likely need to hit to get a gold medal?
And so if we looked at all the data, you’ll notice a 4 0 5 is actually wouldn’t have won Tokyo. So it was a 4 0 4 2. And so the world record, but Tokyo was a super fast track. So very good conditions, low air density, extremely fast track. And so we looked at Paris and we said, what are the typical conditions in Paris?
And then. Had a model, a different model that essentially said, okay, based on the progression of times and the conditions that we’re expecting in Paris, what do we need to hit to have uh, probability of, or a higher probability of a gold medal? So we had one number to hit for what we thought would get us in contention for a top three.
And then we had another number that would get us in what we thought was a contention for a gold medal. So 4 0 5 is what we said. If we go sub 4 0 5, we’re in contention for, for a top of the podium. If we go sub 4 0 7, then we were potentially in, in contention for, for a bronze. And so those were kind of our, our target numbers going in, given the air density that we were expecting.
So that can float. So if it was a. I believe that was at a 1.14 air density, but at Glasgow it was like 1.16. So you’d slow, it’d be slower. but I think in Tokyo is like a 1.09, so it’d be much faster. so yeah, if we, if we do a physics lesson, the lower the air density, the easier it is to cut through so that your same power output, goes faster and the lower air density.
Jill Jaracz: to us that meant how hot it was in that velodrome. Did you expect it? Oh, they, they crank up. They really?
Ryan Cooper: Yeah. Did you
Jill Jaracz: expect it to be that hot?
Ryan Cooper: I did only because I know, uh, that when you’re trying to go for fast times, they crank up the heat and humidity. So like both are gonna be, It, it is.
The first time you go in there, you’re like, what? What is happening? Why, why is it like this? Why am I sweating immediately? It’s, it’s pretty, if you’re not used to it, if you’ve never been to one and you’re going as a spectator, it doesn’t matter what the temperature is outside and make sure that you are layered up because you’re gonna be taking off whatever coat and whatever else you have going in for sure.
So
Alison Brown: it was hot and it really varied throughout. A day
Ryan Cooper: for sure. Yeah. and they’ll, they’ll do it depending on what the event is too. I think like the conditions they’ll try and if you want to fast track for the ones, for the events that are very time focused. Right. And so they’ll, you’ll tend to have the temperature and the, and the humidity cranked up for when they want the really fast, fast track.
Jill Jaracz: What about the track itself? ’cause if I remember correctly, Paris did a fair amount of refurbishment to that track. So did you know what kind of condition the actual wood was gonna be?
Ryan Cooper: we did, ’cause they had a test event I believe there, and I think, I don’t know if they did the refurbishment for that, I believe, I’m sure they did it around there, but we expected it to be fast.
It’ll be interesting to see how LA is, ’cause LA is not as fast to track and they’re gonna do a refurbishment there as well. so it’ll be interesting to see, like, luckily we have kinda home track advantage, so we’ll, we’ll be able to see what the speeds look like on it. Um, but we did expect a, we expected a fast track, but, again, not, not quite as fast as, as Tokyo was,
The phases of Project 4:05
Alison Brown: You’ve got four phases of the, of project 4 0 5. How long of a time period was the whole thing?
Ryan Cooper: we started on it right after Glasgow. So Glasgow was a bit of a disappointment. And so Glasgow 2023, super Worlds first time. They’ve done a Super Worlds, which is kind of, to me it was almost more than the Olympics because you had more events and so you had both para and cycling all together, and you had all of the cycling events. So, an expanded schedule, so downhill mountain biking, regular mountain biking, relay mountain biking. And then on the track side you had all the track events. So, additional track events than, than you have. So individual pursuits and all these other things.
So much more than, than you have at. At the Olympics in terms of cycling events. But we went in and, and we had a super strong, team, pursuit team, and everybody came in healthy and so we were expecting some really fast times and we had been to the wind tunnel and, and we had these vortex suits and, and it was our, we had to get these homologated, so essentially we had to get.
19 different skin suits, worn throughout the, different races on in the track, but they all had to be worn on the track so that we had them as options for the Olympics. So this was our last chance to kinda get all these skin suits at least worn once in a race. And so the rules in in track are that they have to, all the equipment has to be at least.
Raced, to be able to be used in the Olympics. So that’s not the case in other, in other disciplines. But for, for track cycling, that was the case. And so we had, I think, 19 of these, these skin suits that needed to be, needed to be worn at some point in a, in at least one race by the different writers.
and they were individually made for, for the different writers. So we really needed to, Make all the finals and hit all the things that we needed to, to hit. And
Jill Jaracz: so if I can interrupt. Oh. Mm-hmm. Why 19 different suits? What. What was special about different ones, and they’re tailored to, so does somebody have like four and another person has, they all have different numbers and what, what’s different about each of them?
Or what are you trying to do?
Ryan Cooper: So they all had, they all had different cuts, but a lot of ’em had different fabrics in different places. So you’d have different kind of fabrics on the shoulders, different fabrics on different types of, panels, I guess. That made up these, then none of them had seam, so they’re kind of like glued together.
and so, you’d have different panels in different sections. And so it was kind of this mix and match to see what was gonna work better on different writers. And so some writers have broader shoulders, some writers have, different body types. And so you’d have these Different type of textures on different panels to, for the different types of riders. But then also you had some that were, designed specifically for mass start events. Some that were designed for team pursuit, like events or time draw events. And so somebody like Chloe may have three or four different suits.
Somebody like Jen who does both Mass start and team pursuit would have five different suits. And so, each of them had 3D body scans, so they were all custom fit for each, each rider. so a lot of time spent in the wind tunnel trying to perfect both position, but then also the different suits for, for the different riders to give us options.
So a lot of times we prototyped all of these things, but then we wanted to make sure that, We had those as options afterwards so that we could continue to test. If they hadn’t been ridden in competition, then we’d have to mark it off and not have as a, as an option for, for the Olympics.
Additionally, if we wanted to, you know, use some of these different textures, on the men’s side or on other, other riders, then they needed to be, go through that process.
Alison Brown: Do you ever get pushback? Well, there’s so many ways you can get pushback, but specifically when you know you’re going into a world championship, obviously the cyclists want to do as well as possible, but you’re also trying to collect data so they could be sacrificing their world championship result for this additional data to then.
Transfer over to the Olympics. So is that ever an issue for you as a data analyst? You’re like, no, I need this data, but they’re like, no, I wanna win y
Ryan Cooper: Yes. Yeah, it was, um, a little contentious in at parts, because. Especially with some of the suits. If, if you’re trying to ask somebody, the last thing you wanna ask is for somebody to try something new on race day.
And so suddenly you’re, we’re on a tight timetable and we need to get somebody to wear this. but conveniently, the one time that we did need somebody to wear, the suit and it was kind of like a, a very key time that they. You know, a medal was on the line. They, they did wear it and they still ended up winning the medal.
So it was, everything worked out well. So that was very good. so we did, we didn’t end up having to worry about it. we did have to get one of the guys, to wear one of the, the women’s suits, um, because we couldn’t get it homologated. And so he was the last chance to get this one, to get homologated through.
And I think he was, he was already kind of out of contention for the men’s om and so he wore it and I can’t remember what, which race he wore it, but if you go back and you might be able to see it, It starts ripping about halfway through the race and by the end of the race. It’s just, it’s, it’s pretty torn.
Definitely not
Alison Brown: 3D printed for him.
Ryan Cooper: We got the Yeah, no, it was not printed for him and I’m not sure how he squeezed into it to be honest, and so just
Jill Jaracz: blew that back together and it’s still ho modulated.
Ryan Cooper: Uh, no, it’s still, it just had to be written so like they can remake it so they like, it’s, so it’s not that specific suit, it’s that cut, that style that Oh, okay.
So we can, we can make, any copy want after the fact, but yeah, just in just two, that was the only version we had at the time. Yeah,
Jill Jaracz: that’s all I can hear is like, oh, can you do another race this weekend? We got another suit for you.
Ryan Cooper: Yeah. And that was it. And the world champs was the last time, the last, race that we could get those, get everything checked off. and that goes for wheels and goes for everything. so not just the suits. So everything that we wanted to have an option, tires, et cetera, everything we wanted to have an option for. on the track for Paris, we had to. That was our last chance to get everything written.
So, back to your original question, like, so after, team pursuit in, in Glasgow where, I mean, everybody’s power levels, every, all the riders, they were in amazing form going into that, in that race. And so it was, it was disappointing to. To come away six plays and missing out on the medal rounds.
And so we sat down with High Performance Team and Gary and, and Greg, the director, and Jim and I, we said, okay, what let’s take a step back and say, what is it that we need to hit? Let’s find out what our North Star is. And then once we find out what our North Star is. Then we can start to work and say, how do we get there first, figure out what we need to hit, then start to kind of do those steps, those four steps that we talked about.
But first we just need to even see what it is that we need to get to. Then once we see what we need to get to, then we can can work backwards from there. And so in November, the world champs was August of 23, so by November We pitched our first project 4 0 5. And so that was the, the first presentation that we gave.
We had come up with the model for what we needed to hit by Paris, and we said, okay, here’s what we need to hit. And we had come, come up with some preliminary power metrics, CDA metrics, and kind of came up with these, these buckets of say. What is your FTP, your CP 20? Like, essentially, what does your power level need to be?
What is your, your sprint or your kind of max power need to be at? What does your CDA or your aerodynamics need to look like? and came up with these core, for lack of a better word, like we we’re in the business world, we call ’em KPIs. So it’d be like, what are your key performance indicators that we need to hit, to be able to hit those, to be able to achieve those numbers?
And so. By January of 2024, we had the gold target, and then we had the broken down targets for the athletes of this is what a gold medal, a prototypical gold medal athlete for team pursuit would look like. This is what a prototypical metal capable athlete would look like, and then here’s how we look compared to those so that we can track against it.
And it doesn’t mean that everybody’s gonna look like that. In fact, we’ll have a lot of athletes that surpass one area, uh, but may need work in a different area. um, but it gave us a guideline, to start to, track towards and gave everybody, um, key defined goals to be able to, start to, to say, okay, as we’re making progress, we know that if everybody gets close to these numbers, we have a really good shot.
Could be able to get there.
Athletes respond to Project 4:05
Jill Jaracz: What was the athlete response to that when you broke it down into specific goals in different sections?
Ryan Cooper: It was really good actually. So we did a, at one of the camps, before Athlete Selection, we brought, I think there were seven or eight athletes. I think there were seven athletes, for the four spots plus the alternative.
So they came into camp. We did an individual, we did a big group. Kind of presentation with this, with everything laid out. And then we had every individual athlete, we did an hour long presentation with just the one, one-on-one athlete, uh, with myself in the high performance team. And I believe their coaches, if their coaches were, wanted to be part of it, and we broke it down and said for them specifically, here’s where they are, here’s what we need from them.
And here’s why. and here’s the math behind it. And we can go into as much detail or as little detail as you want. And some athletes want to go very much into detail. Some athletes, you know, they say, what do I need to hit? All right, that’s good. I’ll go do it. and so there’s just different mentalities with different athletes.
But overall, everybody was, I was very receptive to it, because I think they realized if I can go and do this and everybody else does their part, then you know, we’re gonna come together and be able to do something pretty, pretty special and pretty awesome. and they had enough faith in the numbers.
I’ve worked with. Several of them previously, um, whether it’s through their pro teams or, individually, through other projects that, I think they had enough faith in the, in the numbers to feel good about the outcome. So
Alison Brown: one of the elements, so you had seven athletes for four spots mm-hmm.
Is all the different combinations. Yeah. And you were, so you were doing data analysis on if we put A with B, with C, with D, oh, now we’re gonna swap out D for R. How that all worked together. How is that? I mean, I hear the ethics accepting it, but there’s also. There’s a lot more data analytics to putting together a team.
So kind of how did they respond and how the coaches respond when you’re saying, no, this person is not gonna help you win. Especially when you’re saying no.
Ryan Cooper: Yeah, and you know, I think when you break it down in your very, when you give your methodology and you say, here’s the methodology, and you write it out and you’re, and you kind of stick to it and you say.
Ultimately it’s the coach’s decision, right? and we, we do data and we show the, here’s what’s likely to happen based on the data. and we do that for the coaches, we do that for the director. We do that, do that for the selection committee, and for the athletes. And so, When you show the methodology and you show the outcome, it tends to, there’s no, like, there’s no real, um, dunno the right word for it, but there’s, I guess there’s no real hiding for it from it.
So it is, it just, it’s, it’s fairly black and white and you can see it now. There’s intangibles that we do bring into it, and I think that’s the area where. You know, you can have somebody that’s super, that meets all the, categories, right? It’s aerodynamic is super strong, has very good power numbers, but track cycling is a very, skill-based sport.
And so. That’s the area, the intangible area, where we have to definitely bring in all the, the coaching knowledge and all of that as a kind of this weighted factor that gets brought in another area is like being able to start or not. So there’s only certain people that can, can kind of with withstand the, being in P one or the first position.
and so if you look at that, Jen Valante, uh, is, arguably the best starter in the world in terms of, team pursuit starter. but she’s also one of the strongest, just team pursuer in general or track cyclist in general. So, do you have her start or do you have her, just in the line is because she’s so strong and if you don’t have her start, then who do you have that can, can kind of slot in there?
These are other areas that you have to take into consideration when you’re, when you’re looking at like the model output. and so those are the kind of intangibles that you, you bring into the analysis, that aren’t hard data, right? that’s more of a Yeah. Soft skill that, that gets factored in.
Alison Brown: Did anything happen last minute? Like, this person got hurt, or this person was sick, and then all of a sudden you’re remodeling mm-hmm. Day before?
Ryan Cooper: Oh yeah. So we, we remodeled, I mean, based on the, the conditions too. So you, you like constantly kinda remodeling based on the conditions Right. Up until, yeah.
Most of it’s to confirm there wasn’t that much that was changing in terms of like strategic, like we weren’t gonna change order, for instance. and likely not gonna change pool strategy, but we were constantly remodeling or Yeah, remodeling to say, okay, well. Let’s say air density changed a lot.
Let’s say it was like 1.17 or something versus 1.14, which doesn’t sound like a lot when you just say it. But, if you were actually riding, that would be the difference of like four seconds or something. Like, it’s pretty substantial. so if you’re riding, like there’s a lot of fatigue that could set in if you’re having to do an extra half lap, or something like that.
If one person’s having to pull an extra half lap. So, you may change slight tweaks in your poll strategy towards the end based on some of those, Everything stayed pretty much between 1.13 and 1.4 the whole time. So there wasn’t really any change there. However, we did get some, Chloe crashed in the time trial early, so was coming off of that.
Kristen, obviously won the, won the road race, uh, which was awesome, but you have some fatigue built up, so both of ’em had fatigue built up and you can kind of start to see it towards the gold medal round a little bit, just, in the final kinda lapse of the, of the gold medal round. so you take those kind of things into account.
Another thing that you, you also take into account, in between the, like a qualifying or initial round and then the subsequent rounds. Riding on the track solo versus riding on the track with two teams. And this is something that’s interesting, and I don’t know if you felt it, but when there’s two teams and you get, you get this air that kind of gets swirled around in there, and it acts almost like a bit of a tailwind.
so if you have two match teams that come around, You can get a, a little bit extra boost almost. And so you go a little faster with two teams. or you tend to go a little bit faster with two teams than you do if you’re when you’re solo. so we, we factor those kind of things into the model too.
Factors in determining female athlete optimization
Jill Jaracz: one of the other things I thought about when looking at optimization, especially on a women’s team, how does, women’s periods take into consideration when you’re trying to meet performance goals or, you know, looking at that? How much does that factor in?
Ryan Cooper: That’s a good question. I know there’s a lot of research on that.
for us, or for like my modeling, it’s, it’s usually like, we kind of have the. The expected power output is kind of a, a given coming in, however, like. That’s a really good point in terms of what that expected power should be going in. and so we worked a lot with Lindsay Golich, out of, U-S-O-P-C, and so she did all the, physical tracking, in terms of physiology, so she.
Had weekly power metrics that she was tracking for everybody. in terms of the CDA, we did all the wind tunnel testing, but then we also had the OnTrack verification. And so for those, I relied on inputs coming in from the coaches and, and then from the U-S-O-P-C team to run into the model.
But that’s a good question. I’ll, I’ll have to ask her like what she did on that
Learning the game plan
Jill Jaracz: As an athlete, how hard is it to memorize the game plan?
Ryan Cooper: I don’t know. They, I think it’s, pretty like drilled into you and so like the game plan itself was, I think pretty straightforward.
If I looked at like the difference, and this is something that we do in this paper and, and we’ll, stress it in the presentation, is the difference between Glasgow and Paris and then having Jen, some of the early model outputs were really interesting and they mimicked some. I believe what Canada or New Zealand did, several years ago in a race, where they had their initial rider, their P one rider do a massive pull off the front, like just, and not, it was just a single pull for like one k, like a huge, massive pull off the front and then drop.
and we had looked at that. Early on, and then subsequent model runs, based on updated data. And once we, added an additional, like fatigue, essentially reconstitution, if you think about like recovery. So like we started to add better recovery metrics into the model. So, that strategy ended up losing out to the strategy that we, that.
Was the final strategy, but yeah, it ended up not being overly complex, I guess. And so it was, pretty short pull durations. Most things weren’t over two laps, and so most things were like a, a lap and a half. So Jen did a very long pull at the beginning. and then everybody did a fairly short first poll.
So between two to one and a one and a half to two laps. Then Jed came, back to the front and pretty much gave everything she had left, for her second pool. gassed herself out and then pulled off. And then everybody else was still on this kinda shorter lab rotation. So one and a half to two.
And the reason for that is if you look at the model, Is that that still gave enough time to kind of let our riders get enough recovery to still maintain that high power output, um, and still maintain speed without giving up too much, in over rotating, so we’re not rotating every lap or every half lap and then losing out time with this kind of constant rotation.
Watching Project 4:05’s execution
Alison Brown: What was it like watching the race for you? Just
Ryan Cooper: Oh, it was awesome. Yeah, it was, I was trying to explain this. Oh man, we, I went up to Colorado Springs last week and we did our LA 28 kinda kickoff. and trying to figure out what, what our medal, goal’s gonna be and, and all that. we talked about winning and what it, what it does. And Brendan, our CEO, he experienced, I think he experienced, his first gold medal experience was Kristen’s Road Gold medal. And I, I can’t remember how he described it, but.
I think there was a picture of him grabbing Tanner, put our director of road and just like squeezing him so hard and just like, I don’t know if he was running, I don’t know. It was just this, this sheer exuberance in his face and like it’s very hard to describe this moment of. Just pure excitement to be witnessing something and excited for the team.
Excited for all the athletes. Excited for the coaching staff. Excited For everybody, but just in, in the nation, like you get to see like this gold medal and it’s, and for Gary like to go out, like he had won a gold medal and, and team pursued the coach and he retired after. And, and to see him go out with that was spectacular.
And so, I’ve been fortunate enough to see a lot of projects from kind of the zero to one stage, in my career across a, a bunch of different industries. And this was by far the highlight. it was really, really, really fun to be a part of. yeah, it’s hard to describe. It was really, really cool.
Jill Jaracz: there was a lot of press about Kristen Faulkner winning both golds mm-hmm. And seemingly coming outta nowhere. But Did you go We had, we had the numbers for that. We knew this was possible.
Ryan Cooper: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She, it’s funny, like, uh, she’s so strong. she is amazing athlete. and I think.
What’s interesting is, and I know they, they made a, a pretty big deal outta like kind of coming outta nowhere on the road race and I think the quoted thing was like a 6% chance or something like that on the road, which is actually not bad. Like that’s pretty good because the highest anybody had was like a 10% chance.
If you look at like the, if you break down the, if we, we look at like ELO ratings, so if you think about like chess or something like that, or it’s usually used for chess. And so if I look at all of the kind of one day classics, so something that’s similar to the road race and you look at like just the one day kind of classic type races or the major stages of the big tours.
So not every stage but the kind of the major stages. And you break those down and you look at head-to-head comparisons and you look at like an ELO type. rating system. So you look at pairwise comparisons of one person versus this person and they win, and then who beat the other person? So you kind of look at all these pairwise pairwise comparisons.
So Katie Ecky was maybe at a 8% or 9% chance and, The Dutch are always around there. And so Kristen was our highest rated person, so it’s not like she was kind of came out of nowhere. So you had a a 6% chance, which was, was still pretty high. we expected her to be more competitive. She had a late season crash.
so going into US nationals, she wasn’t at her at peak. Performance. ’cause she had had a concussion, I believe, earlier in the season. and so she came back for nationals. Didn’t win the time trial, was very disappointed in not winning the time trial. and, Taylor Nib, a, a triathlete who’s also a, will be a very strong cycling.
Contender coming, coming up if she chooses to focus on cycling, in the future. But Taylor Nib won. and I know Kristen was, was disappointed in that, but being able to focus on track in the energy systems that it takes to do really, really well on track. I’m convinced, helped her on the road too.
‘ cause when she needed to go in and, and have that power. On that climb to bridge the gap. And then once you bridge the gap to take off and as we saw, no one had anything to respond. And I think all the track work and all the effort and everything that she put in really, really helped her. and the time off from like being able to actually recover from, injuries and from everything else on the road, it was amazing to watch.
It was, it was awesome. But. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think she’s gonna be a dark horse anymore. For sure.
Alison Brown: Also didn’t hurt that that day felt like the inside of a velodrome.
Ryan Cooper: No, that’s true. That’s right. Yeah, that’s a good point. yeah, there was no lack of, uh, humidity that day either, was there?
Controversies with data analytics in sports
Alison Brown: Analytics gets a lot of heat for. Taking the fun out of the right. You, you’re, you’re nodding your head Yeah. What? I love it. I know Jill loves this kind of stuff. What’s your response to the purists who are like, you’re ruining sports?
Ryan Cooper: Yeah. It, it’s so. I, I wanna say when did that start? Uh, I think it started Moneyball
Alison Brown: with Moneyball.
Ryan Cooper: It started with Moneyball and it started with Moneyball, with baseball. And then in cycling, I wanna say it probably started with Sky, team Sky and Chris room staring at his bike computer going up the mountains. and I do, I do get it. I do understand and. And I see both sides of it and it’s, I, I love to go out and ride my bike without a bike computer.
And so it’s funny, I I built a whole company where we we try and help people go as fast as possible and as little power as possible. And built it for Type A triathletes originally that like to check off boxes. And every single new section of road is a new box to check off with a new power target.
and yet I’ve rarely used my own software to raise, so there’s that. so I totally get it. but in this world of high performance sports, I mean, essentially it’s an arms race. it is a big money, technical sport now. And I mean, what used to be, I guess, like an advantage is now table stakes.
meaning. If you watch the BMX race, this is where I, where it kind of, the light bulb went off. If you watch BMX race in Paris, the Dutch had arrow shin guards, right? they had shoe covers or I guess dust protectors. ’cause you can’t have shoe covers. So you can call out whatever you want, but you know, it was, you know, lace, dust protectors, whatever.
We can call ’em something. but it is. Every country is going to do everything that they can to kinda have this advantage. And so there’s, if you don’t do it, you’re gonna get left in the dust. and so it’s kind of, now you, you have to, and so you have to look at like, what’s the next, like, what’s the next thing to do?
And so did it ruin the sport? there’s still strategy, there’s still big moves, can still work. you see it all the time. You see OT make moves that you go, why did they do that? And then they stick. Um, you still see it in gravel racing. You see a lot of, a lot of these like big moves that.
That’ll happen 40 K from, or 80 K or a hundred k from the finish. so I think there’s still a lot a lot of non analytics out, especially in the roadside. Especially if you look at mountain biking, you look at a lot of that when you get into the time trial, you get into. Track racing against the clock, then I think that’s where the analytics and the, and the Moneyball are really, there’s not much, you know, it’s, it’s kind of table stakes at this point.
Jill Jaracz: it is fascinating to think about the littlest tiny details that can impact performance and, you know what I mean?
What about countries that don’t have the capability of doing this and could have the talent? Do you see that out there?
Ryan Cooper: We do. Yeah. I mean, I for sure I see, I see that out there. And you see athletes, for better or worse, jumping from country to country and, which is kind of a weird thing. mean, somebody from Australia just went to the UK, I believe, one of the men’s sprint, um, writers.
And so you do see some kind of. Nationality jumping because of that, because these other countries have either a bigger budget or have better equipment. but I will say that innovations in AI and innovations and in the access to data, like we can do stuff. USA cycling is a small data team. You’re kind of looking at most of it.
but as I mentioned earlier, outside outsized, RROI, and so we can do a lot through partnerships, through U-S-O-P-C, through universities that are willing to help. and so I think, you can do a lot without. Having a huge budget, it’s just you have to, do it through other means.
So you have to do it through partnerships. Do universities willing to, to extend help or to, give, facilities or internships or, access to a bigger, collective group of manpower. So, One thing I, I do think is, is another frontier that hasn’t really been tapped, and it’s not my area of expertise, but we do have people looking into it, on the nutrition side.
So I think there’s still a lot of, area to explore there. and so I think when you talk about energy use and energy systems.
The more, more calories you can bring in and the more you can like actually consume and, and be able to digest it and use it. and I think that on the pro tour side, that’s an area where they’re really kind of pushing boundaries just in terms of amount of carbs that you can take in and, and be able to, to utilize, per hour.
Because the old rule of thumb was you could do. 60 to 90, grams of carbs per hour. And now, from what I’m hearing, at least on some of these teams, they’re up at 140 or 150 grams of carbs per hour. And so if you just think about that calorie wise, they’re, they just have so much more energy to use on these climbs.
And so you see times on these climbs that are just so incredibly fast because they just, they have more energy than they used to.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, that’s fascinating. Something to look for.
Ryan Cooper: Yeah. Yeah. It is an area that I’m really interested. It’s not my area of expertise, but, uh, yes, that’s something that we would definitely want to, um, see if we can capitalize on, so.
Jill Jaracz: Excellent. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for taking time and talking with us about this. of luck in the Edelman choices, but that’s, it’s a great honor and uh, we’re looking forward to seeing what USA cycling comes up with for LA 2028.
Ryan Cooper: Awesome. Thank you guys.
Follow USA Cycling
Jill Jaracz: Thank you so much, Ryan. You can find out more about USA cycling@usacycling.org on Facebook, Insta, and X. They are at USA Cycling on TikTok. They are USA cycling. We will also post videos of the final races on our website, flame alive pod.com. That is some good watching. Watching that semi-final match was so good, and then just New Zealand was like nothing compared to what the USA was putting out.
So incredible performance by the women, especially considering how Kristen and Chloe were coming off the road race after this too, and just incredible, incredible.
Milan-Cortina 2026 News
Alison Brown: Oh, Malto.
Jill Jaracz: Ooh, yes. Kyoto News is reported that 60% of Winter Olympics tickets have already been sold. Italy, USA and Germany are the top three national ticket buyers. Also, 110,000 applications for 18,000 volunteer positions have been received. So again, if you’ve applied for a volunteer position and don’t get it, know that there was a lot of competition.
Uh, more than half of the applications for volunteers are under 35. And also ticket buyers were quite young too, so they were very excited about that in a different Kyoto News article, IPC President Andrew Parsons said he’s been seeing a good investment in terms of accessibility in the region, particularly in tourism.
Getting more accessibility in hotels and in the transportation system, and also training hotel staff on how to be more inclusive. That turns out to be one of the bigger legacies of a Paralympics, especially
Alison Brown: in Europe, right? Because in Europe there’s not a lot of, uh, laws like a DA in the United States and this Americans with Disabilities Act, that changed a lot of accessibility for public buildings and hotels, and I would expect a lot of these old European ski towns.
Never thought about wheelchair access or access for visually impaired or all those things that when you’ve got a newer build is part of the deal. So now you’re trying to retrofit, and we saw a ton of this in Paris. How do you retrofit those metro stations, right, that are a hundred years old beneath a city that’s even older.
So European cities have this unique challenge, and then European mountain towns have an even. More complex challenge. So yes, that just the idea that you have to think about this like wheelchair users wanna go skiing. Mm-hmm. Okay, well now you need wheelchair access hotel rooms for that. Just those small things.
Not not small if that’s you, but just, oh, we have to think about this now. Right. The Paralympics does that for towns.
Jill Jaracz: Right. And yeah, it’s not just putting on a sporting event. It’s working on making the area a lot more user-friendly for people who have different needs and. I’ve started to see stuff about Paris and we’ll, uh, I’m gonna dig into that this week about, uh, their accessibility legacy that they’ve, that the game’s left behind.
And, you know, LA will probably still have some challenges that nothing’s perfect even with the a DA act here. But I mean, we start on such a different level. So I bet the IPC then sees different opportunities for. Accessibility and, they don’t have to start from square one with the us. So, uh, it’s really good that that’s part of the mission of the IPC and hopefully this keeps continuing to grow.
Alison Brown: It’ll be interesting to see what challenges Salt Lake City faces. ’cause winter is so, you know, when we were in Beijing, we were joking about how places just had cardboard down over the snow, and that was your accessibility. When you’ve got a DA, you’ve got a lot of newer builds in Salt Lake City. What challenges and opportunities are they seeing there?
Rather than, oh, we need to put wider doors, or you need, the things at the, the crosswalks with sound, you know, some of those kind of lower hanging fruit.
Theme Music: Mm-hmm.
Alison Brown: Well, it’s done. Okay. Now what, what can we do to be better?
Jill Jaracz: Interesting. Wow. We know people at Salt Lake City, so. I’m putting that higher up on the list ’cause it’d be interesting to see.
Yeah. What do they, what do they have to do and what can they do and what can, where can they be a leader in accessible sport or accessible tourism?
But back to Milan and it’s venue. Speaking of accessibility, uh, Daniel Jonas Roche reports in the architect’s newspaper that the arena Santa Julia Hockey stadium in Milan is due to be completed in December, 2025. That’s a little close. That’s probably like, well, if they do it in the beginning of December, then you’ve got a month or like.
Seven weeks or so before you really need it for the games. Really, really need it for the games. but it is cutting it close. This will be a 16,000 seat venue that will be useful in Milan. They’ve said it, it does sound like the Adidas arena in Paris, where they needed something that was more mid-sized.
Where they could definitely fit in the crowds. They could use it for concerts, they can use it for sports, they could use it for other mixed uses. Uh, there will be a big piazza outside. There’s going to be a speakeasy lounge going
Alison Brown: with the official Prosecco. No doubt.
Jill Jaracz: Right, right. Well, I, I wonder what’s gonna be finished.
If the target is December, what will be done? What will not be done? Will the speakeasy lounge be done so that hospitality has a place. The C she plays for for hospitality.
Alison Brown: bathrooms better be done, or we’re in trouble.
Jill Jaracz: We’re in trouble regardless. Come on,
Alison Brown: come on. Because this is the hot one of the hockey arenas.
It’s not like the the biathlon that’s so far away that we probably won’t get to. We’re gonna be in this building if it exists.
Jill Jaracz: So, yeah, I am very curious as to what will be done on time and what is going to be, not smoke and mirrors, but, oh, this is obviously not finished yet because I, again, I do not trust that it will be done and spanking shiny new. I just fear that it’s gonna be like a lot of places. A lot of host cities where they barely got stuff up at the last minute, or like Beijing when we found out they were taping wallpaper to the walls.
Uh, if you are a shoe person, Look for some Nike Olympic shoes to come out next year. According to Brendan Dunn reporting in complex, The Nike Air Max 96 Olympic will be back from 2026. This was originally a 2004 release that has a white base with horizontal stripes and accents in black, blue, green, red, and yellow to mimic the Olympic ring colors.
The 2004 version also had these visible gel or air pockets in the base, if you remember that look.
Alison Brown: I have like the most basic sneakers ever. I’m such not a sneakerhead, but I’m, I’m sitting here going, oh yeah, that sounds cool.
Jill Jaracz: The new version is slated for Spring 2026, which means it will come out between January and March of that year.
For those of you who are interested, the new shoes style code is IB 7 8 7 2 dash 100, and then the site House of Heat notes that the shoes will probably retail for $190.
Alison Brown: You know, it’ll be interesting to see if at Media Day or in their kit the Olympians get these early. Good question. That would be good question.
That would be good. Swag. I.
TKFLASTAN News
Jill Jaracz: Welcome to Stan. It is the time of the show where we check in with our team, keep the flame alive. These are past guests and listeners of the show who make up our citizenship of our very own country named Shuk. Stan,
Alison Brown: first up. Alison Levine won silver in the individual event and gold in the pears in the BC four category at the Santiago World, Boccia Challenger,
Jill Jaracz: Kim Rhode is back on the ISSF World Cup shooting circuit at the World Cup in Buenos Aires.
She placed second in skeet and then she won the next World Cup event in Lima. Kim now has 26 Career World Cup wins. She is one behind all time leader Ryman Devic from Slovenia.
Alison Brown: And at the last IOC session, Dick Pound received the Olympic order, which is the IOCs highest honor well deserved
Coming Soon – Get in touch!
Jill Jaracz: and that is gonna do it for this episode. Let us know your thoughts on how sports federations are using data to win the medal race,
Alison Brown: and we love hearing from you. You can chat with us and other listeners on our Facebook group. Keep The Flame Alive Podcast. Email us at Flame Alive pod@gmail.com and the voicemail and text line is always open at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8.
That’s 2 0 8. Flame it. If you need more Olympics and Paralympics in your life and who doesn’t sign up for our newsletter@flamealivepod.com, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes.
Jill Jaracz: May is Mental Health Awareness Month. So we are putting together some special episodes that focus on mental health topics next week.
We will kick that off with our interview with. Figure skater Gracie Gold. So excited about that.
Alison Brown: another little baby born from my trip to the World Figure Skating Championships.
Jill Jaracz: Exactly. So be sure to tune into that next week. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.