The Standard Life Wheelchair Basketball teams have unveiled today new bespoke seats for their wheelchairs; they were designed and produced by a host of companies and organisations, one of which includes BMW.
From a process that begin in 2009, BMW's role in the development was to provide quick and precise production of each seat design. Using 3D scans, BMW was able to produce high quality DuraForm seats, individually customised for each player in a matter of weeks. Another area of expertise from the company included the ability to create items that measure the same thickness across all areas - a incredibly important to the professional players apparently.
Other organisations involved include Loughborough University Sports Technology Institute, Contour886 (specialises in custom made seats) and BAE Systems. From start to finish, these institutions have collaborated to design and build each seat to optimise performance, speed and agility for each player.
The seat itself weighs a full 1kg less than the old model and following tweaks to the whole chair another kilo has been saved.
The efforts have certainly paid off during testing; as they gave a fully completed seat to Ade Orogbemi who used it during the Paralympic World Cup. He said, "The new seat has improved my game enormously. The stability means I can now turn quickly, and the extra speed makes it easier to defend against the best attacking sides in the world."
Results have shown that on an agility course Ade's time dropped from 10.1 seconds in his old chair to 9.94 seconds; and his 20-metre sprint time decreased from 5.11 seconds to 4.97 seconds. These margins may seem small, but as we have seen recently, they count when it comes to the Olympics and Paralympics.
James Giddings - 28 Aug 2012