Women feature prominently at Sports Tomorrow Congress (WOM+N)2021

Once again, the Barça Innovation Hub, FC Barcelona's platform for sports innovation and knowledge, is honouring its annual event by bringing together some of the leading practitioners in different fields of sport at the Sports Tomorrow Congress, to be held from November 8 to 12. This year's edition will focus on women in different thematic areas related to science, technology and business in the world of sport, and will be held in a hybrid format, with face-to-face conferences that can also be streamed on the congress website. 

Coinciding with the sporting success of the Barça women's team, the congress will focus on women and their role in the different areas of the sports industry, with the aim of promoting equal representation and opportunities for women in all areas of the sector. Hence, this year's symposium is being presented under the name of the Sports Tomorrow Congress (WOM+N) ²⁰²¹, a statement on what the event is all about.

The more than 75 hours of content on the schedule can be followed both in person from the various purpose-designed venues on the Camp Nou facilities (Auditori 1899 and Sala Roma) and virtually through the BIHUB online platform. The congress is thus consolidating a trend started with the 2020 edition that, due to the pandemic, was purely online and had more than 2,000 attendees from different parts of the world.

Seven programs on topics related to sports innovation

Its seven 'tracks' cover a wide range of specialities: Medicine and Physiotherapy, Business, Technology, Nutrition and Performance, Data Analysis, Methodology (Coach) and Gastrosport, the latter being a new field that combines sports nutrition and gastronomy. All will be treated from the perspective of innovation and with women's sports as one of the main topics, especially in the disciplines of Medicine and Physiotherapy, Nutrition and Performance, where there will be discussions on, among other topics, the latest research and studies related to the inherent characteristics of the female anatomy and its responses to sporting activity.

Women are also highly represented among the participating professionals. Of the more than 120 specialists from 47 countries who will be speaking at the congress, 55 per cent are women. Speakers include Barça Femení players Alexia Putellas and Marta Torrejón, who, together with coach Jonatan Giráldez, will open the Coach track with a recorded session. Caroline Hansen will also take part in a session on the Medicine and Physiotherapy track and Mariona Caldentey will appear in the Business track. Other notable female names are Milena Bertolini, coach of the Italian women's football team, Rita Guarino, coach of Inter Milan Women, and Iraia Iturregi, coach of the Athletic Club women's team, all in the Coach track.

The Medicine and Physiotherapy track will feature, among others, Celeste Geertsema, one of the most important sports doctors in the world and who was the first woman to work as an official FIFA doctor at a World Cup (Russia 2018), Nicky Keay, renowned endocrinologist of Sport and Dance, and Clara Prats, professor at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. The technology track features names like Alana Beard, Olympic bronze medallist at Rio de Janeiro 2016 with the US women's basketball team who currently helps retired elite athletes to refocus their professional careers.

Other big names include Frenkie de Jong of the FC Barcelona men's team, who will take part in the Analytics track in the form of a recorded conversation with Vosse de Boode, head of Sport Science and Data Analytics at Ajax Amsterdam, in which they debate about how professional players can leverage information from data analysis and video. Barça basketball player Àlex Abrines will take part in the Technology track; Jorge Vilda, Spanish women's soccer coach, will speak in the Coach track and chef Xavier Pellicer will talk as part of the Gastrosport track. The participants also include a wide representation of FC Barcelona professionals in the different specialities.