In the fall of 2014, Andrew Wilson took a front-row seat in Ken Ono’s number theory class at Emory University in Atlanta. Wilson was not only double majoring in applied math and physics, he was a walk-on member of Emory’s swim team. Ono took an interest in Wilson’s ambitions. “We thought that together, maybe we could use our interest in mathematics to help him improve as a swimmer,” Ono said.

Ono, who typically studies abstract patterns in numbers and special functions called modular forms, began collecting and analyzing acceleration data from Wilson and other Emory swimmers to identify and quantify their weaknesses. “It got to the point where I could just see what an athlete was doing without actually watching them swim,” he said.

Within two years, Wilson won a national collegiate championship; he would go on to earn a gold medal at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. By then, Ono had moved to the University of Virginia, where he worked alongside Todd DeSorbo — the head coach for both UVA swimming and the U.S. Olympic women’s swim team. Ono will join the Olympic team staff in Paris later this summer as a technical consultant. “I feel like we’re all in this together, trying to make something new,” he said.

Quanta spoke with Ono about how he has used mathematics to help swimmers make it to the Olympic stage. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

• So how successful has your program been?
• What was your initial goal?
• How did you get started?
• It took time to get this experimental setup to work.
• What kind of data do you collect?
• Like what?
• How do you extract this information from your data?
• And this math works the same for all four strokes?
• Why is breaststroke harder to deal with?
• You also use your data to make predictions and develop race strategies, right?
• What challenges have you had to overcome while doing these analyses?
• What have you taken away from this experience?

...read more at quantamagazine.org