Google Cloud
x Team USA
As a partner of Team USA, Google Cloud collaborated with elite athletes to build an AI tool that transforms standard video into actionable performance data, helping athletes find their competitive edge for the Olympic Winter Games.
Historically, elite skiers and snowboarders lacked the data needed to safely push their limits.
Google Cloud is helping by providing AI to measure extreme human movement without the use of sensors.
Meet the athletes
Shaun White
Alex Hall
Maddie Mastro
Colby Stevenson
“It's very complex how we do the tricks... flips, corking, spinning… I see AI from Google Cloud really bringing the data.”
“We're all such visual learners. We're really excited about being able to compare past tricks to new ones.”
“It's going to really help when you're working on one trick over and over again—to figure out what works and what doesn't, very efficiently.”
“If we can read jump and landing angles, that would be so valuable for us.”
The physics
no one
could see
The physics no one could see
Google Cloud AI helps athletes understand their performance by measuring every phase of a trick.
Coaching insights with Gemini
Gemini synthesizes these metrics and explains them in plain language. What happened, why it matters, and what to try next.
3D pose
How the body spins, compresses, and holds its line through the air. Cumulative rotational degrees, rotational velocity, axis angle, tuck compression—captured frame by frame.
Flight dynamics
The path through air and space. To visualize movement, the team developed new ways to render the body's trajectory—capturing amplitude, speed, and the shape of the cork.
The build
Pose estimation research
Infers 3D skeletal data from standard video—tracking body joints even when limbs disappear behind the athlete. Any camera becomes a motion capture sensor.
Multimodal understanding
Watches footage like a coach. Identifies the athlete, detects stance, trims video to isolate the window of airtime.
Code generation
Helped developers write the algorithms that turn raw skeletal data into usable metrics—spin rate, velocity, joint angles.
Natural language reasoning
Translates the data into clear feedback. What the numbers mean, and what an athlete can do with them.
Secure, Scalable Platform
Hosts and scales the system so it's accessible wherever Team USA trains and competes.
High-Performance Infrastructure
Google Cloud TPUs provide the compute required to fine-tune and run inference on models built for the unique demands of elite snow sports.
Visualizing the invisible
To ensure athletes and viewers can truly "read" a run, we developed custom graphics that reveal the physics behind the sport.
The Cork Ribbon maps the chaotic axis of a spin into a clear, trackable trajectory, visualizing the shape of the cork in mid-air.
Paired with skeletal tracking, which captures body mechanics frame-by-frame, these tools break down the nuance of every trick—turning a split-second blur into a precise story of performance.
The edge
in action
Find your edge
Google Cloud drops in
Google Cloud x Team USA
Google Cloud x Alex Hall
