Eddie Dunbar may have years to go in his career, with hopefully more big wins to come, but he is already branching out into the business world. He has become an investor in an AI coaching platform that wants to directly take on TrainingPeaks.
The Irish climber, who recently moved to Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team, has also joined the athlete advisory board of Vekta, along with France's silver medal winner from the road race at the Paris Olympics, Valentin Madouas (Groupama FDJ United).
During his three seasons with Australian World Tour team, Jayco AlUla, Dunbar worked with Vekta as the platform fine tuned the riders' training and performance. The €19.99 per month subscription-based platform also specialises in using AI to determine cause and effect in performance; the very specific efforts that led directly to improved performance.
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Dunbar said he was very excited to become an investor in the platform as cycling, and pro sport generally, was increasingly harnessing the benefits of AI, taking away the "guessing" in training. The company described him as a technically minded athlete with “a meticulous, data-driven approach to training” who could help its platform evolve quickly.
“The demands of training and racing are changing, and the way performance is understood has to change with them,” Dunbar said in a statement confirming he was now an investor and an athlete advisory board member.
“Vekta is building something that reflects the reality of where the sport is today and where it is heading. Being involved at this stage is really exciting and is about helping shape what comes next.”
The performance and data scientists behind Vekta have already worked with a number of pro teams to develop AI-based tooks to enhance coaching capacity. That has evolved into creating a new platform, to take on TrainingPeaks.
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Vekta styles itself as an AI enhanced tool that will aid cyclists and their coaches alike. It offers free subscriptions to coaches and says it will enhance their work with riders rather than aiming to replace coaches with AI.
It also believes coaches will be able to greatly increase the number of riders they coach, as well as dialling their training, securing better performances and helping riders reach their peaks with more certainty.
Vekta said Dunbar was a strategic athlete investor and that he and Madouas were founding members of the newly created 'Vekta athlete advisory board'. The creation of the advisory board aimed to "ensure Vekta’s long-term evolution is directed through the insight, needs, and experience of world-class athletes".
The company said of Dunbar: "A technically minded athlete with a meticulous, data-driven approach to training, he has already played an integral role in Vekta’s early product development - and will continue to help shape the platform’s next generation of performance tools."
Vekta can gather up data from any wearable device and feed that data - from training and racing over any number of past years - into its platform to build a bank of performance knowledge about each rider. This includes analysing what exactly the rider was doing during very particular efforts and determining the impact of all training on performance weeks and months later.
It also uses other information, including temperature and altitude, that race and training efforts were conducted it. Further, recovery data is also fed into a rider's profile on the platform as well as information about nutrition and any physiological data about a rider.
The intention is to very closely determine how the type of training and conditions maximise a rider's performance. It is then hoped coaches can drill into those routines the AI tools determine are most favourable for each rider, helping produce maximum performance.
The Vekta platform, using all of the information available about each rider, can also draw up training sessions for the athletes depending on the aspect of performance the cyclist and their coach wants to work on.
