The senior management of the Israel Start-Up Nation team met with eight local start-ups, offering technology that will help the team meet the physical, athletic and psychological challenges of the team’s first Tour de France.
Israel Start-Up Nation team: “We have been exposed to brilliant companies and technologies and are planning to start first pilots”.

 

Wednesday, 29 January 2020 (Tel Aviv)

Eight Israeli start-up companies have met with senior management from the Israel Start-Up Nation (ISN) professional cycling team, which will participate for the first time this year in the prestigious Tour de France. The start-ups presented their technology and innovations which could help the team better prepare, monitor and optimize performance for its cyclists. The team will work alongside some of the start-ups on pilot projects, to merge the relevant technology with the team’s objectives over the next 3 years.

The event took place at the Tel Aviv offices of Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), a non-profit organization working to promote the Israeli high-tech industry. SNC and the Israeli team have reached a partnership agreement under which the team will carry the name “Israel Start-up Nation” in the world’s most important racing circuit – the WorldTour.

Israeli start-ups enlist to help Israel’s first professional cycling team prepare for the Tour de France

 

A specialized team from SNC studied the needs of the riders and coaches, before filtering the Israeli start-ups which can deliver innovative and creative solutions for the cycling team. These start-ups then presented technology that can facilitate advanced monitoring of physiology, training load, nutrition and sleep, along with many other factors.

“It was very impressive,” said ISN Performance Director Paulo Saldanha, who is responsible for the critical area of maximizing the capabilities of the team’s cyclists. “I felt like a kid in a candy store, I could taste anything I wanted. This exposure to the start-up high-tech ecosystem allows us to filter relevant companies and to apply the technology with some of the best athletes. This is a win-win scenario whereby the start-ups improve their products, and our team increases its opportunity to perform to the highest level.”

“The first round of introduction to start-up companies at the SNC premises was a real success,” added Kjell Carlstrom, Team ISN Manager. “It was great for us to listen to the innovative technologies and services that the companies presented. We are sure that both ISN and the start-up companies can benefit greatly from this partnership and these encounters.”

“We joined the team’s training and met with the team’s professional managers to see and understand what technological solutions could bring value to the cyclists and the coaching team. After a thorough overview of the field we introduced them to eight Israeli start-ups, which is just the beginning of the process. We hope to see some of the technologies integrated into the team’s platform and hopefully they will help the team produce results,” said Talia Shekel, Strategic Partnerships Manager at SNC.

The co-owner of the ISN team, Sylvan Adams, expressed satisfaction with the results of this unprecedented encounter between his team and the Israeli start-ups.

Israeli start-ups enlist to help Israel’s first professional cycling team prepare for the Tour de France

“Israel has the largest number of start-ups per capita of any country in the world, so it is entirely fitting that our principal sponsor is Start-Up Nation Central,” Adams said. “This will give our Israel Start-Up Nation team access to cutting-edge technologies, a secret weapon of sorts as we embark on our first season in the WorldTour. We recently had several emerging sports technology companies present their products to ISN, and that’s just the beginning of this exciting collaboration. I can’t wait to see what Israeli innovation will produce.”

The 2020 season will be the first time an Israeli team will compete in cycling’s most prestigious race, the Tour de France, which is the world’s third most watched sports event (after the Summer Olympic Games and the soccer World Cup) and an excellent opportunity to present Israeli innovation to the billions who watch the race all over the world.

The ISN team comprises 30 professional cyclists from 16 countries. The team’s owners are the Israeli-Canadian philanthropist Sylvan Adams, Israeli businessman Ron Baron and the Canadian Kevin Ham, who holds minority rights through his company Reinvent.com.

List of participating start-ups that presented their technologies to the team’s coaches and described their developments:

Physimax Technologies: track and improve musculoskeletal wellness and performance through objective, data-driven analysis.

Zone7: analyze data from wearables and video, track medical condition and performance, and forecast injuries.

Nutricco: nutritional guidance system that helps users track, calculate and manage their daily nutritional balance.

Sleeprate: combine sleep monitoring, assessment and therapy into a unified package.

Biobeat: wearable device for continuous, noninvasive, accurate, medical-grade monitoring of vital signs.

The Elegant Monkeys: extract information about users’ emotional state from physiological sensor data.

Weairable: electro-optical sensor for monitoring lactate levels in the body to check for sepsis and measure endurance fitness.

ATLASense Biomed: simultaneous remote monitoring of the medical data of a large number of patients.