The Race Club Is Building a Sensor That Sees What No Coach Can
For years, The Race Club’s technology-driven approach to technique analysis was available only to swimmers who could travel to Islamorada, Florida — and afford the process. Twelve hours of testing per swimmer. Data sent to Sweden for manual extraction. Weeks for results. Gary Hall Sr. decided that model had to end. This year, The Race […]
For years, The Race Club’s technology-driven approach to technique analysis was available only to swimmers who could travel to Islamorada, Florida — and afford the process. Twelve hours of testing per swimmer. Data sent to Sweden for manual extraction. Weeks for results. Gary Hall Sr. decided that model had to end. This year, The Race Club launches TRAC IQ — a wearable sensor system paired with an AI-powered app designed to bring that same analysis poolside, anywhere in the world. In the second part of our conversation, Hall Sr. explains what it does, how it works, and what it could mean for a country like India.
The Race Club has always used technology most swimming programmes don’t have access to — velocity meters, smart paddles, pressure meters. How did that shape your understanding of the sport?
That technology was really my educator. During COVID I wrote the book Fundamentals of Fast Swimming — and the findings in it came directly from the testing we’d been doing. I purchased technology where I could find it: some from Italy, some from Finland. None of it was made in the United States, frankly — this country was behind on swimming technology and I had to reach elsewhere.
But the problem was it wasn’t user-friendly. It was expensive and very time-consuming. We would spend an average of twelve hours per study, per swimmer. I would send the data to Sweden where a coach would do the extraction manually, put it all into Excel sheets, send it back to me. I would spend hours analysing it and then another couple of hours on a call with the swimmer. We could only touch a few people that way. It just wasn’t practical at any meaningful scale.
So two years ago you decided to build your own.
We decided we could no longer depend on others to build the technology for us. We had to do it ourselves. I’m not trying to sound like I’m bragging, but we know more than pretty much everyone else because we have spent years understanding exactly what needs to be measured and why. We knew what we needed — it was just a matter of whether we’d bite the bullet and invest. It’s a big investment. I just felt it was time.
We’ve been working on it for a year and a half. We’re launching later this year — October, maybe November.
Tell us about TRAC IQ — what exactly is it?
TRAC IQ is a set of four sensors worn by the swimmer — two on the hands, one on the goggle strap at the head, one on the lower back. Together they measure pretty much everything about a swimmer’s technique. There’s an app that goes with it, running on an iPhone, that gives scores for every metric and tells you exactly how to correct the problems it uncovers.
The name TRAC is an acronym: Track, Record, Analyse, Coach. It also carries TRC — The Race Club — inside it. And IQ tells you this is smart technology, figuring out things the human eye simply can’t.
The old process took twelve hours per swimmer and weeks for results. With TRAC IQ, you test all four strokes in about twenty minutes. You download the sensor data via Bluetooth in thirty seconds. You upload the video through wifi in another minute or two. And then the app gives you everything — right there on your phone.
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What does the data actually look like? What is it measuring?
Things nobody is measuring right now. Peak propulsion force per hand — and the difference between left and right, which should be similar but often isn’t. Hand velocity at every point in the pull cycle. Vertical, lateral, and propulsive force vectors — so you can see not just how hard someone is pulling, but whether they’re pushing down when they should be pulling back. Rotational speed of the body through each stroke cycle. Coupling — whether the peak rotational speed is timed correctly to coincide with peak propulsion of the pull. Kick cycle timing in breaststroke. Acceleration and deceleration patterns through every lap.
On top of that, it gives you overall swim metrics — stroke rate, distance per cycle, average propulsion force, lap times. And then it goes deeper: pull analysis, lap-by-lap breakdowns. Everything synchronized to video, frame by frame.
For example — I showed this during our conversation — my grandson’s test showed he was rotating thirty to thirty-two degrees during his pull, when he needs thirty-five to forty. On one side his peak rotational speed was hitting after his peak propulsion, not during it. He was missing the coupling timing on that side. You cannot see that from the pool deck. You cannot feel it in the water. The sensor finds it in seconds.
The data sounds complex. What does a coach actually do with it?
That’s always been the problem with existing technology — it gives you data and leaves you scratching your head. We’re not going to do that.
Every single metric in TRAC IQ is coded red, yellow, or green — with a number from zero to ten. Green means good. Yellow or red means this needs attention. You click on a yellow or red metric and it explains what that metric means, why it matters, and then it pulls up a one-minute video showing exactly that problem — what it looks like when done wrong, the drill to correct it, and what it looks like when done correctly. One minute. The correction is right there without ever leaving your phone.
We’re producing a hundred of these videos. I’m speaking as a physician: the app gives you the diagnosis and offers you the treatment. You choose whether to treat it. But we’re going to lead you directly to the best correction we know.
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What’s the cost model, and realistically — can an Indian coach access this?
The sensor set costs around a thousand dollars, which is probably out of reach for most coaches in India. So here’s what we’re proposing: if a coach can get twenty swimmers on their team to subscribe as Silver members of The Race Club at two hundred and fifty dollars per year — which gives them unlimited testing and full access to our video library — they get to keep the sensors. They don’t pay for them.
We’re starting the rollout with two hundred coaches in the US and twenty-five in Australia. After that first wave, we open it up to any coach anywhere in the world — that’ll likely happen in early 2027.
So a coach in India — in Bengaluru, in Chennai, wherever — can potentially get this technology into their pool without paying for the hardware, by building a subscriber base among their swimmers. Two hundred and fifty dollars a year is not nothing, but I think most competitive swimming families in India could manage that.
You mentioned the vision goes beyond analysis — eventually coaching in real time.
That’s the ultimate goal. Right now at The Race Club we coach our swimmers using a UHF radio frequency connection — I have a microphone on the deck, they have a headset in the water, and we’re correcting their technique stroke by stroke in real time. The vision for TRAC IQ is to do that automatically through the sensors and earphones. The sensor detects you’re pulling incorrectly. It tells you — right now, on this stroke, correct your pull. Not after the session. Not after the test results come back. In the moment.
That would be a fundamental change in how swimmers learn. Instead of getting feedback a month later, or even twenty minutes later — you get it on the next stroke.
Next: Part 3 — India’s Swimming Problem: A Nation of 1.4 Billion and a Tiny Competitive Pool
Gary Hall Sr. is Technical Director and CEO of The Race Club, Islamorada, Florida. theraceclub.com
Part 2 of 4 | The Machine That Reads Your Stroke
