Patri Guijarro takes part in the first day of the Sports Tomorrow Congress

The 2024 Sports Tomorrow Congress, the sporting innovation event promoted by the Barça Innovation Hub, started on Monday as part of the Mobile World Congress. The first day of the event saw a debate on the growth and diversification of the personalisation in the world of sport, beginning with the congress' slogan this year: "Shape your own game." 

From the area of professional sport, the most notable figure involved on the first day was the FC Barcelona Women footballer Patri Guijarro who took part in a round table entitled 'Women football: How to combine success and wellness'. The midfielder was accompanied by Carolina Loya, responsible for research and development at BIMBO and by Dr. Eva Ferrer, part of the BIHUB medical team. 

Patri: "Nutrition is as important as training"

Patri Guijarro spoke about various topics related to her wellbeing and her performance, amongst the nutrition and mental health. The Mallorca midfielder revealed that "nutrition is as important as training, it's our fuel and it helps you perform better." Dr. Ferrer, for her part, highlighted "the necessity of acquiring good habits and as you grow you can polish them," a relevant aspect especially in periods of injury. 

Relating to performance, Patri explained her routine regarding providing data to the Club's medical staff to optimise her fitness. She and the team work daily via an application which responds to questions about fatigue, muscular pain, stress, sleep, periods etc with training and recovery phases based around this information. "We also have GPS to know our muscular load and I have used a ring to monitor rest," added Guijarro. 

Regarding mental health, Guijarro touched on the tiring effect of continual travelling, a process she admits "you end up getting used to." The player also highlighted the figure of the psychologist as "it is important for your mental health, you can get injured; if your head is not right you can go through a tough time." Dr. Ferrer assured that in this context, "mental health is health; it is part of our well being." 

WhiteBIT offer a session on blockchain technology 

Alex Starikov, Product Owner of the Whitechain platform for WhiteBIT offered a session called “Decoding the future of fan engagement with personalized digital merchandise” in which he explained the keys to fan engagement in the coming years. 

Starikov also touched on the "Phygital Items Revolution", the creation of a combination of digital and physical objects for fans, key in the short term for connecting with audiences. He went on to highlight recent studies that show that Gen Z has a great interest in forming part of wider communities of fans and in acquiring digital assets of their teams. 

The WhiteBIT executive set out various products created by the company on this subject. The Wall of Fans Souls is a portal on which fans can created their own merchandising products such as shirts, in a space safeguarded by blockchain technology. He also talked about the arrival of the digitalisation of memorabilia for club, the creation of digital copies of trophies and the platforms on which the fans can become digital artists. 

Nutrition, genomics and technology in stadia

More than 500 accredited visitors in person and another 500 following via streaming, the first day of the Sport Tomorrow Congress came to its conclusion with sessions on nutrition by Asker Jeukendrup who works with the Dutch Olympic team and Mireia Porta, medical nutritionist from FC Barcelona. 

Yannis Pitsiladis, an expert in genomics from Brighton University, talked about genetic predisposition in performance analysis and Dr. Gil Rodas and Dr. Eva Ferrer from the BIHUB medical team, along with Juan Ramón González, a researcher from from ISGlobal, explained how FC Barcelona work in the field of sportomics, the analysis of different biological parameters to shed light on the personalisation of training and prevention of injury. 

In the afternoon, an expert on the application of technology in stadia, Skarpi Hedinsson, from the Los Angeles Rams and the SoFi Stadium in the city, explained the latest developments in the world of smart stadia.

Presence of Onalabs and Visualfy

Other topics touched on during the day were performances, data interpretation, fan experience and trends in scouting, the latter with a contribution from Paulo Araujo, responsible for the area at FC Barcelona. 

Start ups working with BIHUB also had space on the first day of the congress with Onalabs talking about the personalisation of fitness and Visualfy noting the importance of accessible sporting facilities. 

The day ended with a new edition of the Allianz Startup Challenge in which emerging businesses presented their solutions and products for different areas: an initiative that had on its jury the FC Barcelona board member responsible for BIHUB, Àngel Riudalbas, and the MotoGP rider Marc Márquez.