Technology Partnerships

Partnering with UK Sport

In January 2008 BAE Systems and UK Sport announced the formation of a major technology partnership to support British athletes in preparing for sporting success at the Summer and Winter Olympics, Paralympics, World and European Championships. The partnership gives the British sporting world access to leading-edge technologies worth £1.5 million as well as considerable engineering knowledge and expertise. The two organisations will work together until 2012.

It is envisaged that the partnership will provide technology support to our major medal winning sports: cycling, sailing, canoeing, rowing and bob skeleton, helping heroes such as Chris Hoy, Ben Ainslie and Shelley Rudman achieve further success. The partnership will also support a number of Paralympic disciplines, with opportunities to help our medal winners in the likes of wheelchair basketball, disability athletics and disability swimming.

BAE Systems will deliver expertise in structural and mechanical engineering, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, mathematical modelling and simulation, human factors and materials science. The technology element of the relationship is managed on a day-to-day basis by BAE Systems' Advanced Technology Centre in Bristol, UK which will act as a broker for all technologies within the company which might be suitable and available.

The partnership will build on the already recognised success of UK Sport's Research & Innovation Programme, which aims to work with both sports and partners in the industrial and academic world to deliver programmes that can maximise athlete performance and find the fractional improvements that can make the difference between first and second.

UK Sport originally approached BAE Systems because it is recognised as one of the world's most innovative companies in technology developments, employing 18,000 skilled engineers in the UK alone.