Taking the strain: Warner Bros. Discovery Sports on enhancing graphics with biometric data for the UCI Mountain Bike World Series By Heather McLean Friday, August 8, 2025 - 09:54
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Wearable tech company Whoop, the sponsor of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, has been working from the beginning with the Warner Bros. Discovery Sports production team to provide biometric data that can then be interpreted into the live production
Live biometric data translated into graphics is a growing part of what Warner Bros. Discovery Sports is adding to its live broadcast of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series. As the host broadcaster working with technical services provider Gravity Media, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports formed the series in 2023 in a deal between itself and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI).
Wearable tech company Whoop, the sponsor of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, has been working from the beginning with the production team to provide biometric data that can then be interpreted into the live production.
Chris Ball, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports' vice president of cycling events, explains how this has evolved: Whoop is a consumer product, so that's been a really interesting and really good challenge to bring a biometrics health wearable onto a live broadcast.
In year one [2023], we brought in live heart rate, which was a development from a project that we'd run with the Giro d'Italia, bringing live heart rate from the peloton into our broadcast, continues Ball.
Because of the control we have [over the production of UCI Mountain Bike], we can bring much more to the production, and with the teams and the athletes. We brought live heart rate in, which was the initial step to really focus on how we get the data from the [wearable wrist] band onto the bike using Bluetooth, and then out wirelessly into the course and then into our broadcast graphics. Once we got that connection running and stable we use a lot of proprietary equipment that's not off the shelf we've started to embellish that with more data that we can take from these bands.
Warner Bros. Discovery Sports' presentation and reporting team are able to take advantage of the plethora of new graphics containing biometric athlete data at the UCI Mountain Bike World Series 2025
Taking the strain
In year two 2024 Warner Bros. Discovery Sports bought biometric data called strain' into the broadcast's live graphics to further explain the competitive nature of the sport to viewers. Ball explains what strain data consists of: Strain is a huge part of what the band [from Whoop] provides, which is basically how hard someone's working. It's a combination of different metrics: you've got heart rate variability (HRV), you've got heart rate, you've got respiratory rate, and it all comes into one thing called strain.
We brought live strain into working with Whoop, and their APIs into the broadcast, and now we've got live heart rate zones, because heart rate was one thing, but if your max heart rate's 170, mine's 190, and both of our heart rates are currently 140, you're working harder than I am proportionally.
Just the number of heart rate, which is what we began with, didn't necessarily give any context to the viewer, so we now show live heart rate in relation to zones, and we can go up to three riders at a time, head to head [with on-screen graphics] as of this year. So we could say, you're working in zone four at a heart rate of 140, I'm in zone three , and then the commentators can react to that and say, well, look at that, Heather's in the red, Chris is in the green, we're going into the last lap, so Chris has clearly got more in the tank to launch an attack .
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Ball adds on live strain graphics: That's really fascinating because in downhill for example, we're seeing some of the best performances. The rider in the start has a very low heart rate they're super relaxed, super focused and then you see the heart rate increases as the descent continues. And in cross country with the Olympic format of an hour and 20 minutes long, who is where in the red and when and what are they going to do is really interesting.
Guy Voisin, vice president of cycling at Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, adds: The true innovations [of this broadcast] are the capture network to collect the Whoop data on track live all the while the race is on. The collection of the Whoop data to our servers, sent back to the main Whoop servers, and returned to us in a matter of seconds, permits us to give insights to the viewers about the racing athlete that has been unseen before.
We can examine relative effort in the strain gauge, compare athlete effort spent, stress on various athletes and finally heart rate live and historical throughout the race, continues Voisin. We can also examine the recovery of the athlete throughout the weekend, how well have they prepared through the race.
2025 has seen Warner Bros. Discovery Sports bring in head-to-head graphics for the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, and also getting the teams and the manufacturers for the mountain biking industry involved in the broadcast through graphics
Head-to-head
2025 has seen the broadcaster bring in head-to-head graphics, and also getting the teams and the manufacturers for the mountain biking industry involved in the broadcast through graphics. We
