7 min read

Paris 2024 feels like a lifetime ago. The medals have been awarded, the stadiums have returned to everyday life, and most of the highlight clips have long since been sliced into TikToks. What remains is more exciting than the headlines of the day: the technology that was used for the first time across the board in Paris is now in your watch, in your training app, and in the camera roll of your phone. The question isn’t what the pros used anymore. The question is what of it actually benefits you as a recreational athlete.

Paris 2024 was the Olympics where cameras learned to think

For context: Intel was listed as the official AI Platform Partner of the IOC in Paris and delivered 3D athlete tracking across multiple sports. The system uses multiple cameras per arena, computes a skeleton model of the athlete, and derives running paths, jump curves, and impact angles in milliseconds. Omega, the long-time timekeeper, significantly expanded its computer-vision capabilities in swimming and athletics. What you saw as a viewer were the overlaid tempo curves, jump distances, and stroke rates during broadcasts.

The real magic happens behind the scenes. These systems became so visible in 2024 not because the hardware improved—those cameras are essentially the same—but because the models reading the images have evolved. Pose-estimation networks have become so stable over the past three years that they now run live instead of in post-processing. And because the research behind these models is open-source, the same technology soon lands in hobby apps. That’s the part that affects you.

Wearables: What top athletes wear, what you actually need

In the locker rooms of Paris, the usual suspects were present: Garmin, Whoop, Polar, Apple Watch Ultra, Coros. Not a single athlete wore a wearable you couldn’t buy yourself. The difference isn’t in the device, but in the context. A pro team has a coach who interprets the raw data. You have an app.

That’s both good and bad news. The good: the hardware advantage of elite athletes is practically nonexistent. The bad: how useful your watch is depends almost entirely on how good the manufacturer’s software has become. And here, something has actually happened in the last two years. Readiness scores that were all over the place three years ago are now more stable. Sleep tracking now provides usable insights into deep sleep and REM phases—if you take the absolute accuracy with a grain of salt. That means: don’t believe you were in deep sleep for exactly 1:47. But trust that the trend over weeks is accurate.

What gives pros structure in training works for you if you use it conservatively. Not every red readiness indicator is a reason to take a break. But three red indicators in a week is a signal you should take your sleep seriously.

Pose estimation by the trail: What the laptop can really do since Paris

The most exciting part of Paris’s tech, in my view, is the one that received the least marketing. Pose estimation—the ability to recognize body positions from a standard video—is one of the applications that looked so polished at the Olympics only because it was multiplied across more cameras. The underlying technology is freely available.

Google MediaPipe runs on a regular smartphone camera. Apple’s Vision Framework does the same on an iPhone without external servers. There are open-source tools that let you analyze your bouldering jump, your knee angle while running, or your paddle rotation in kayaking. What this isn’t: a replacement for a coach. The models detect joints; they don’t interpret movements. They won’t tell you if your hip is rotating correctly. They’ll only tell you where it is right now.

Those who use it quickly find a pragmatic application: record a video, run it through an analysis app, compare joint angles. For technical movements like climbing, parkour, or trail running, these are tools athletes would have paid for in training camps five years ago. Now it costs you half an hour on the couch.

What Paris 2024 did NOT deliver

A few honest words about what didn’t happen. Continuous glucose monitoring for athletes has been touted for years as the next big revolution. It wasn’t standard in Paris. Individual athletes experimented with it, the data pool remains thin, and for most hobby athletes it’s still not a meaningful entry point. What the biosensor industry promises and what practice shows are worlds apart.

Second point: bio-impedance analysis for fluid and hydration status is a lab tool for elite athletes, not everyday use. Your sports watch delivers estimates, not measurements. Anyone telling you their watch warns them of dehydration has confused marketing with function.

And: the major AI video systems showcased in Paris 2024 never made it in full form to hobby apps. What you have on your phone today is a heavily reduced version. That’s fine, but you should know it. The difference lies in camera count and background computing power.

LA 2028: What’s coming—and what you don’t need to wait for

Los Angeles 2028 is already in the planning phase, and a few things are all but locked in. New disciplines (flag football, cricket, lacrosse, squash, baseball/softball) bring fresh measurement challenges. The IOC and its tech partners will likely lean even harder on automated video analysis, because sports played across multiple parallel fields are tough to officiate with humans alone. It sounds like progress—and it probably is.

For you as a runner, climber, boulderer, trail junkie or kitesurfer, none of this changes much. In two years the LA tech will meet the same fate as Paris tech today: a year after the Games, the interesting bits will be in open-source repositories. It’s not worth waiting for the next wave. The wave already rolling toward you is more than enough.

Use it pragmatically: your setup under €400

The foundation: A sports watch with a solid heart-rate sensor, plus an optional chest strap for interval sessions. That could be a used Garmin Forerunner, a Coros Pace or an Apple Watch SE. Price range: €150–€300. Add another €40–€80 for the chest strap. Optical wrist-based heart-rate tracking is fine for steady runs; it’s unreliable for intervals. If you do intervals, use the strap.

The software: The manufacturer’s app is step one. Try it before you consider premium services like TrainingPeaks. Readiness scores and load recommendations from the big brands have improved over the past two years. If you want more, upgrade after three months—not before.

The analysis: Your phone is enough for video analysis. Free apps with MediaPipe integration give you joint overlays and angles. For technical sports they’re useful when you have a concrete question—not to impress yourself. The question might be: how does my landing look on a trail descent, where am I losing speed, what’s my foot doing on impact? With a tripod and your phone’s camera you’ll get answers.

What you can skip: Smart rings as extra sleep trackers if you already wear a watch. Glucose sensors without a medical indication. Expensive analytics subscriptions before you’ve exhausted the free tools. And basically any new hardware that measures something you can’t clearly articulate. Training smart still means focusing on a handful of signals and reading them consistently.

Featured image source: Pexels / Atlantic Ambience (px:12955772)