A Dream Team of 100m Freestyle Olympic Champions Backing SWIMBOT

A Dream Team of 100m freestyle Olympic champions backing SWIMBOT innovations and crowdfunding campaigns!

An Interview by Claude Droussent, sport journalist, former L’Équipe head editor

Jim Montgomery, 61, was the 1976 100m freestyle Olympic champion. He was, in this race in Montreal, the first one in the world to fall below the 50 seconds fence (49.99). Jim has opened his new JM Swim School in Dallas in January 2016, providing outstanding swimming classes for children.

Rowdy Gaines, 57, was the 1984 100m freestyle Olympic champion, in Los Angeles. He is currently chief fundraiser for USA Swimming and swimming analyst for TV networks NBC and ESPN during main events as Olympics or World championships.

Alain Bernard, 32, was the first Frenchman to win gold on Olympics 100m freestyle in 2008 in Beijing.

David Jamet is founder and CEO of SWIMBOT (BOT standing for Better On Technique) a technology startup developing 3D motion design graphics and IOT wearables to improve all swimmers technique.

Photo Courtesy: SwimBot

INTRODUCTION of SWIMBOT

Why should your child learn to swim? Because learning to swim significantly reduce the risk of drowning. With the growing number of private pool, water is all around us – in rivers, lakes, drainage ditches, even large puddles. It is essential to equip our children with this life skill giving them access to all the fun and fitness the water can provide!

David, what’s your background, and why did you create SWIMBOT?

I was a competitive swimmer in the 70’s. I swam 18:53.00 on 1500m free at 12 years old. In the 70’s and 80’s, Jim Montgomery and Rowdy Gaines were my sports idols! With my MD in Computer Science, I first worked in the US for six years, and then for Atos, worldwide IT partner of the Olympics since 2000. I founded SWIMBOT (BOT standing for “Better On Technique”) in 2013, because I knew then technologies like 3D graphics and IOT were mature enough to revolutionize the painful learning process of a new swimming technique. This applies to champions AND for beginners. Think of it: swimming is the only speed sport where swimmers do not know their speed! They know their time, but have no clue of their speed variation.

When I first contacted Jim Montgomery in October 2015, Jim told me his primary focus in 2016 will be the opening of his JM Swim school. I then started thinking about children safety in water. Alain Bernard was already supporting SWIMBOT, and Jim introduced me to Rowdy Gaines. Rowdy is the foundation ambassador of Make a splash, the USA SWIMMING foundation for children safety. To win the heart of Jim and Rowdy early January, I used our SWIMBOT exclusive R&D outcomes! I provided to these two mythic 100m free Olympic champions the scientific evidence (collected by SWIMBOT) explaining why the 100m freestyle is the king’s race of the Olympics!

You then had a “Dream team” of 100m free Olympic champions, but then what?

When visiting Jim’s brand new JM Swim school, Jim has tested our full set of technologies. We agreed that SWIMBOT technologies could have a huge contribution to children safety. We called this R&D program I CAN SWIM. We will crowdfund this program this April 2016, follow us!

Jim has generously accepted to be the first Swim School in the world to test our prototypes in the last quarter of 2016, we are honored to have such an immense champion and personality contributing to our R&D program with his Swim School.

Rowdy was as well fully supportive of our innovations, and offered me to back our crowdfunding campaigns for the first SWIMBOT (9 February) and of course also for our “I CAN SWIM” program for children safety (April 2016)

David, how can SWIMBOT technologies contribute concretely to children safety?

Our very first SWIMBOT worldwide innovation called “early bird” (crowdfunding starts on 9 February) is able to teach faster new and complex swimming technique to all swimmers (beginners to champions). It provides movies (3D motion design, our swimming tutorials) and powerful smart device guiding swimmers with sophisticated sounds in the water. If youngsters have fun today with motion design and electronic toys, then SWIMBOT has the perfect technology set to succeed. The main problem of children drowning in private pools is silence: it takes 3 minutes for a child to drown because he exhales immediately, as a reflex, and drowns in total silence. We can teach to all kids above 2 years old the proper technique to float and yell for help!

How can JM Swim school support SWIMBOT in such an innovation program?

It is a huge asset for us work with JM Swim school! To innovate as a startup, we have consistently used the “Lean Startup” methodology: test everything first, don’t waste time or money with useless features! I have forced myself and my team again and again to test immediately all our developments in the water to make sure they create value. JM Swim School is providing us the ideal test bed place to check and improve our prototypes (movies and smart device) through useful hardware and software iterations. When and if JM Swim School judges our prototypes are safe and valuable, we will complete our industrialization and marketing process.

The above article is a press release submitted to Swimming World. To reach our audience, contact us at newsmaster@swimmingworld.com.

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