Bloomberg Businessweek USA - January 25, 2018

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ILLUSTRATION BY SAM KERR

Mounir Zok

Themastersportstechnician

gettingAmerica’sOlympiansonthe

podium.ByEbenNovy-Williams

GAME CHANGER Bloomberg Pursuits January 29, 2018

SOME OF THE MOST ADVANCED

sports technology on the

planet isn’t being created

at a shoe lab in Oregon or

a moonshot factory inside

Google. It’s coming out of a

guy’s house.

Mounir Zok, the biomedical

engineer in charge of the U.S.

Olympic Committee’s tech and inno-

vation, brainstorms products and training

aids from his home in Cupertino, Calif. Together

with his team of engineers and specialists, he’s produced,

among other training gear, a set of connected glasses for

the U.S. women’s cycling pursuit team that projects perfor-

mance data directly onto lenses. “Just like a butterfly can

never be a caterpillar again,” Zok says, “once an athlete

starts using technology to peak when she wants to peak,

limit injuries, and maximize performance, she can never

go back to just intuitive training.” The team used

them to prepare for the 2016 Summer Games

and won a silver medal.

Zok was born in Lebanon and studied phys-

ics at the American University of Beirut. He

earned a doctorate in biomedical engineering

from the University of Bologna and was working

on a couple of tech startups, including one with

various Italian Olympic teams, when the USOC

called. Zok jumped at the job offer, moving his

family in 2012 to the USOC’s

home in Colorado Springs.

Four years later he was

named director for technol-

ogy and innovation and relo-

cated to Silicon Valley. The

move brought him closer to

people who speak his language;

in interviews he references the IoT

(internet of things) far more than the

IOC (International Olympic Committee).

For the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, Zok and

his team built virtual-reality ski-training software and ana-

lyzed different ice types to determine which kind of skate

blade is fastest in varying conditions. They also developed

a skin suit that doubles as a full-body sensor, helping ath-

letes get a more holistic view of their heart rate, skin con-

ductance, speed, and muscle fatigue.

That level of wearable tech is likely years away from

being available to consumers. Zok won’t say

who his partners were in the development pro-

cess or even which athletes are using the suits;

any hints might tip off Olympic engineers in

other countries, erasing the USOC’s advan-

tage. “Icall it the 1 percent question,” he says.

“Olympic events typically come down to a 1 per-

cent advantage. So what’s the one question that,

if we can provide an answer, will give our ath-

letes that 1 percent edge?”

b. 1976, Beirut

• Once played bass
  in a band, because, he
  says, he wasn’t good
  enough to play guitar


• 
  

  Has been making his
  way west since birth,
  living in Lebanon,
  Cyprus, Italy, Spain,
  Colorado, and now
  California