ADS Event: Sport Data Challenge

The fact that sports data has unprecedented possibilities was proven on Friday 15th November 2019 during the first Sport Data Challenge. ADS hosted a Sport Data Challenge in collaboration with Sport Data Valley Lab, Le Champion and Running 20/20 at the Startup Village.

The aim of the challenge was to come together and find new insights based on Dutch running data provided by Le Champion. Every year, they organise sport events, such as the Dam tot Damloop and the TCS Amsterdam Marathon. Challenge questions included: “Is it possible to run the marathon in Amsterdam under two hours?” and “Why are there many more dropouts at the Dam tot Damloop compared to the half marathon and what is the impact of bad weather on this?” A diverse group of 35 participants showed up to find out.

In a time frame of six hours, everyone worked on the four data sets that were prepared beforehand by Sport Data Valley Lab and Le Champion. It was very impressive to see how the teams experimented with the information provided. The results varied from optimizing the moment of sending out a newsletter, to how we can make Amsterdam the ‘fastest’ marathon. The winning team’s results were presented by using animations of a flow of runners on the route of the TCS Amsterdam Marathon.

The event has been a great success with around motivated participants, an extensive dataset and a rightful winner. We want to thank everyone for this successful first edition and we hope to see you next year!