Olympics II, 13/07/2024

RTL Today - The Lisa Burke Show

In part II of our Olympics special, we meet more of the Olympic entourage supporting Luxembourg's athletes in Paris this summer, plus more sport experts.
- Raymond Conzemius - Chef de mission of Team Lëtzebuerg for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, Technical Sports Director at COSL
- Christophe Ley - Associate Professor of Applied Statistics at the University of Luxembourg
- Aude Aguilaniu - Physiotherapist, ex elite athlete (Ski Cross)
- Max Englaro - Strength & Conditioning, & Rehab Coach U23 FC Augsburg
- Frank Muller - Sport Psychologist
- Nina Goedert - Physiotherapist
Raymond Conzemius, Chef de Mission of Team Lëtzebuerg for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 joins me with some of the Olympic Team’s entourage including sport psychologist Frank Müller and physiotherapist Nina Goedert.
Christophe Ley discusses the increasing use of statistics in sport science and many accompanied sports ventures. Strength & Conditioning, & Rehab Coach for U23 FC Augsburg, Max Englaro, uses such metrics to work with his footballers. And Aude Aguilaniu, now a physiotherapist, previously an Olympic level athlete for Ski Cross talks about the absolute need to build resilience after career-shattering injuries.
Raymond is a former international athlete in high jump, and still holds the national record with 2.22m. Unfortunately he didn’t have the chance to participate in the Olympic Games or World Championships but has happily found a career supporting others to attain that dream.
Conzemius is the Founder and Former director of Sportlycée, the sport secondary school in Luxembourg, and highlights the importance of an integrated approach to sports development in Luxembourg.
Max Englaro is a Strength & Conditioning, and Rehab Coach for FC Augsburg U23. Prior to this, he was Head of Performance in the Vienna Football Academy. Max observes how young children or adolescents are talent spotted and then developed into sports stars with the help of targeted training, nutrition, medication and sleep, to name but a few of the metrics. With increasing emphasis on sport sciences the measurements and data around elite performance can enhance results.
Christophe Ley, Associate Professor of Applied Statistics at the University of Luxembourg, President of the Luxembourg Statistical Society, President of ECAS (European Center for Advanced Statistics Courses) and leader of the international network S-TRAINING (bridging sports science and data science) is, in fact, the catalyst of these two week’s of Olympic conversations.
Christophe and Yves Dominicy (from last week’s show) have written books on statistics in sport. Through chosen measurements it is possible to use maths to predict outcomes of matches. The accuracy of such predictions naturally depends on many factors. For instance, handball will give you about 81% accuracy compared to football where, apparently, more luck is involved in scoring and there are generally fewer scores. So with football the outcome of positive prediction stands at about 65%.
Sport medicine and metrics is a fast growing industry, even for non-professional athletes, with the possibility of wearables and nutrition information available to us all.
However, data science and AI is also vital to help prevent injury. Christophe will be organising the international MathSport Conference next year in Luxembourg, June 2025.
https://math.uni.lu/midas/events/mathsports2025/
Aude Aguilaniu is now a physiotherapist and researcher, having previously been a world-class skier. Aude actually qualified for the Sotchi Winter Olympics in 2014 but was seriously injured just a few months before and so couldn’t participate. She talks about resilience building, injury prevention and her latest research project on injury prevention: Healthy Active.
Frank Müller is a former competitive basketball player and now a sport psychologist at the Sportlycée in Luxembourg. He is also an external expert for the LIHPS (Luxembourg Institute for High Performance in Sports) and the COSL (National Olympic Committee), providing psychological support to elite athletes and coaches.
Frank talks about his different responsibilities and how he coaches the minds of elite athletes for all possible eventualities. He also works with the group around that athlete which includes coaches, physios and parents.
As with so many things, being an elite athlete means that you sit in the centre of a team of experts. Nina Goedert, a sports physiotherapist, reiterates the absolute importance of communication in a cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Nina Goedert works with athletes of all ages and levels, those dealing with injury and those working on prevention strategies.
She has participated in multiple national and international sports events in her role as a sports physio, including the Tokyo Olympic Games 2021, World Games 2022, European Games 2019 & 2023, Games of the Small States of Europe 2019 & 2023, and several European Championships in Karate, etc.). Nina will be part of the team supporting the athletes in Paris this summer.
We wish all of the athletes the very best of luck this summer in the Olympic Games, and the supporting entourage too!
https://teamletzebuerg.lu/
https://www.fcaugsburg.de/games/?team=u23
www.sportlycee.lu
https://math.uni.lu/midas/events/mathsports2025/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymond-conzemius-328a9147/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophe-ley-b71607166/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aude-aguilaniu-24a05343/