Use of smart socks to identify different skating styles in professional inline speed skate athletes

Inline roller speed skating is a discipline that is still poorly studied from a biomechanical perspective and is often assimilated to its ice variant, which, as an Olympic sport, enjoys greater scientific and media interest. It was recently reported in this journal that the two variants of this sport differ from a technical point of view, and, more importantly, that the roller variant requires greater attention to the technical execution.1 Our research group is investigating roller speed skating technique using, among other technologies, specialized smart socks featuring piezoelectric sensors and triaxial accelerometers. These are worn by skaters to assess the real-time force distribution of the foot’s support inside the skate and the efficiency of the push via measurement of the athlete’s generated lateral- to-lateral acceleration (Bongiorno Index).2 After validating its usefulness in discerning the neophyte from a professional athlete2 we went to look for a greater level of discriminative ability, that is, we asked ourselves whether these socks could identify the different skating styles that can distinguish a sprinter from a long-distance skater. To do this we compared the data already of a 32-year-old sprinter who was already world champion in the 200 m with those of a 28-year-old cross-country skier, already world champion in the marathon (42 km) with roller skates on asphalt