Olly combines love for science and sport at Olympic Games

OLLY Logan has combined two of his main passions – science and sport – to build a successful career with Team GB’s aquatic teams that has led to him attending not one, but four Olympic Games.

The Raphoe native, who lives in Fintona, Tyrone with his wife and two kids, enjoys a wide and varied role in the aquatics sector, managing a team of experts all of whom are keen to improve the development and performances of their athletes.

“I’m a performance consultant,” he explained. “So, I am contracted to sport and I work across three main areas – performance analysis and biomechanics, which is about the technique of how people move and data analysis; skill acquisition, so I work with the coaches to help the coaches work with the athletes and help the athletes learn new skills, learn them more quickly, faster through structured practice for better returns and the final aspect is research and innovation – I head up all of the research and innovation strands in aquatics.

“So, whether that is developing new camera systems, or bespoke garments for a lot of the athletes or research studies with PHd’s to find performance advantage, I head up all that.

“I’m lucky enough to have a team of people, so I manage probably five or six people across the different areas. Some of the bits like skill acquisition and biomechanics are what I’d, historically, be very strong in, whereas it’s project management on a lot of the other aspects.”

During his time with the Team GB aquatics squads, Logan has seen his athletes achieve incredible levels of success, but the Donegal man has also been acknowledged for his work behind the scenes, picking up a UK Sport PLx Innovation Award in November for his involvement in developing new diving suits and trunks.

“We won the innovation award for a project I was involved in, designing a bespoke suit and trunks for the divers,” he explained. “They normally get provided swimming garments, but the actions they do and the body types are very, very different, so we helped design and create some bespoke garments for them and that helped support their performance – a best performance at the [Olympic] Games ever – when they picked up five medals.

“The main issue was the fit and the comfort of the garments, which weren’t really that effective and there were some reservations from the female divers being uncomfortable and exposing themselves, which is the last thing that you want when you’re jumping from a ten metre platform!

“So, it made a big difference for them.”

The new suits certainly helped the athletes who wore them with such distinction at the Paris Olympic Games last summer when Team GB enjoyed 10 days to remember in the pools.

“I’m contracted to aquatics, so I work across swimming, paralympic swimming and diving, so I work across those three sports and all three were the best teams ever,” Logan beamed.

“Paralympic swimming had the best Games for 100 years, Olympic swimming was the third best ever and Olympic diving was their best ever Games, so across the board it was a fantastic Games.

“I have a little bit of involvement in Artistic Swimming as well, and they got their first ever medal, so breaking new ground, which was nice to see recognised.”

And the success achieved by the Team GB athletes was something Logan thoroughly enjoyed, especially as he has spent so much time away from home over the years leading up to the Games.

“There were a couple of medals where I had a bit more of a direct involvement, with the likes of Ben Proud and Duncan Scott, who I would work quite closely with,” he added.

“This was Ben’s third Olympics and he’d previously had a fourth and fifth, so he had a second place, so for him to finally pick up that silver medal – he had won everything else there is to win apart from that Olympic medal, so that was a real nice one. I was really, really happy for him.

“It’s good to see, you put the effort in and you get the output. It makes you feel like you’re getting rewards for all the efforts because I have two young kids and last year, I totted it up, I was away from the kids for 150 days, so you’re giving up a lot of family time for your work.”

‘NOVELTY HASN’T WORN OFF’

Having been to four Olympics now, Logan admits that the novelty of the biggest sporting event in the world certainly hasn’t worn off and even after experiencing London as part of Team GB, he though Paris and the venue for the aquatics events was ‘impressive’.

“It’s mad! It’s crazy to have been to four Olympics, but I’ve been working in elite sport since 2005, so nearly 20 years now, which is mad,” he exclaimed.

“Every Olympics is different. I always remember London because I was with Team GB and you were essentially the home team and it was just overawing, the amount of attention and adulation that you got.

“If you were wearing the tracksuit, regardless who you were, you just got attention!

“But every Olympics is different. This one, for example, because I was involved with the diving and swimming squads I was in the swimming arena, the La Défense Arena, which is where Racing 92 rugby team play and the last thing they had in there before the Olympics was Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour.

“So, they had Taylor Swift then she finished up and they shut the place down and built two swimming pools in there.

“It’s an incredible arena, which is built for entertainment and the acoustics in there were so loud. It was very, very impressive. You left there every night thinking ‘what an atmosphere!’

While he was able to savour the atmosphere, the venue and the overall Olympic experience in Paris, Logan admits that much like the athletes, those behind the scenes have to keep an even keel during the days of competition.

“You do get into a work mode. The (swimming) competition is ten days long, so you get highs and lows of good performances and maybe people who didn’t do as well and stuff like that,” he explained.

“But you learn to move onto the next one, which is part of the job because you can’t get too hung up. We talk about flattening the waves – you get highs and lows, but you just have to flatten them a little bit to move onto the next performance.

“But you can’t completely ignore it, you have to reflect and go ‘isn’t this great’ and enjoy those moments. That’s why when people won medals, if I’d done some work with them or I felt I had involvement, I’d take the time to celebrate that with them because you very rarely get those moments so it’s important that you do reflect so they don’t pass you by.

“You have to enjoy the moment but you can’t get hijacked by it because it’s not a single match, there are ten days of competition and there is always someone else coming up to compete.”

Having enjoyed almost twenty years of working at the top level of elite sport, Olly is hoping to take a small step back over the next four years during the road to the Los Angeles Games in 2028 when he will continue to ‘give back’ and attempt to encourage more youngsters to see a future in the sciences after he somewhat stumbled into the sports science world by attending a ‘guest lecture’ at Queen’s and he hasn’t looked back.

“I had never any intention to get involved in sport when I was at university,” he said. “I was a hockey player at uni and Raphoe, I went to Queen’s and studied physics as an undergraduate.

“By third year, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I went to a guest lecture by a guy called Professor Steve Hake, who talked about how engineering had impacted upon sports performance and I was like really struck and interested in some of the stuff he was talking about.

“And that kind of inspired me to look down the route of combining sport and physics and I found a Masters in Sports Biomechanics at Liverpool John Moores and essentially that sent me on a path because I saw the connection between this and working in elite sport.

“Alongside my Masters I was helping out with Athletics and Football and bits and pieces and ultimately got a job in 2005 with the English Institute of Sport and that set me on my way.”

And it’s because of his love of both disciplines within his professional life that he is so keen to spread the word and deliver a message to the next generation of students that there is a big wide scientific world out there, it’s not just staring into microscopes while wearing white coats.

“It’s really important for me to give back at school and student communities,” he enthused.

“In September, in collaboration with South West College, we did a science in sport day where I shared how stem subjects like science, technology, engineering and maths impacts upon sports performance to help demystify some of the science subjects because some people have stereotypes of what scientists are and to share the number of wide careers that are available in sciences in sport.

“I use a lot of sport examples to help explain some of the difficult examples in the sciences and if that can help people get more interested and more involved in the subjects that’s great because in Northern Ireland we have a chronic shortage of scientists.

“There are loads of jobs available but not enough people to fill them.”