Technologies

How Team USA’s Olympic Skiers and Snowboarders Got an Edge From Google AI

Google engineers hit the slopes with Team USA’s skiers and snowboarders to build a custom AI training tool.

Team USA’s skiers and snowboarders are going home with some new hardware, including a few gold medals, from the 2026 Olympics. Along with the years of hard work that go into being an Olympic athlete, this year’s crew had an extra edge in their training thanks to a custom AI tool from Google Cloud.

US Ski and Snowboard, the governing body for the US national teams, oversees the training of the best skiers and snowboarders in the country to prepare them for big events, such as national championships and the Olympics. The organization partnered with Google Cloud to build an AI tool to offer more insight into how athletes are training and performing on the slopes.

Video review is a big part of winter sports training. A coach will literally stand on the sidelines recording an athlete’s run, then review the footage with them afterward to spot errors. But this process is somewhat dated, Anouk Patty, chief of sport at US Ski and Snowboard, told me. That’s where Google came in, bringing new AI-powered data insights to the training process.

Google Cloud engineers hit the slopes with the skiers and snowboarders to understand how to build an actually useful AI model for athletic training. They used video footage as the base of the currently unnamed AI tool. Gemini did a frame-by-frame analysis of the video, which was then fed into spatial intelligence models from Google DeepMind. Those models were able to take the 2D rendering of the athlete from the video and transform it into a 3D skeleton of an athlete as they contort and twist on runs.

Final touches from Gemini help the AI tool analyze the physics in the pixels, according to Ravi Rajamani, global head of Google’s AI Blackbelt team. which worked on the project. Coaches and athletes told the engineers the specific metrics they wanted to track — speed, rotation, trajectory — and the Google engineers coded the model to make it easy to monitor them and compare between different videos. There’s also a chat interface to ask Gemini questions about performance.

“From just a video, we are actually able to recreate it in 3D, so you don’t need expensive equipment, [like] sensors, that get in the way of an athlete performing,” Rajamani said.

Coaches are undeniably the experts on the mountain, but the AI can act as a kind of gut check. The data can help confirm or deny what coaches are seeing and give them extra insight into the specifics of each athlete’s performance. It can catch things that humans would struggle to see with the naked eye or in poor video quality, like where an athlete was looking while doing a trick and the exact speed and angle of a rotation.

“It’s data that they wouldn’t otherwise have,” Patty said. The 3D skeleton is especially helpful because it makes it easier to see movement obscured by the puffy jackets and pants athletes wear, she said.

For elite athletes in skiing and snowboarding, making small adjustments can mean the difference between a gold medal and no medal at all. Technological advances in training are meant to help athletes get every available tool for improvement.

“You’re always trying to find that 1% that can make the difference for an athlete to get them on the podium or to win,” Patty said. It can also democratize coaching. “It’s a way for every coach who’s out there in a club working with young athletes to have that level of understanding of what an athlete should do that the national team athletes have.”

For Google, this purpose-built AI tool is “the tip of the iceberg,” Rajamani said. There are a lot of potential future use cases, including expanding the base model to be customized to other sports. It also lays the foundation for work in sports medicine, physical therapy, robotics and ergonomics — disciplines where understanding body positioning is important. But for now, there’s satisfaction in knowing the AI was built to actually help real athletes.

“This was not a case of tech engineers building something in the lab and handing it over,” Rajamani said. “This is a real-world problem that we are solving. For us, the motivation was building a tool that provides a true competitive advantage for our athletes.”

Technologies

Trump Maintains US‑Iran Negotiations Continue Amid Tehran’s Denials of Duplicity

President Trump insists that US‑Iran talks are ongoing despite Tehran’s denial of any negotiation plans, while warning that only a deal or total surrender will allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Conflicting statements from both sides have heightened uncertainty as the conflict enters its sixth month.

On Monday, President Donald Trump asserted that negotiations between the United States and Iran are still taking place, even after Tehran stated it has no intention of engaging in direct talks with Washington.

In a fiery Truth Social post, Trump labeled Iran’s leaders “unbelievably duplicitous,” claiming they are lying about ongoing peace talks “whether Iran wants to admit it or not.” He repeated his assertion that the United States completely controls the Strait of Hormuz, despite maritime traffic through the crucial route lingering at only a small fraction of pre‑conflict levels.

He wrote, “Nothing reaches Iran unless we allow it, and nothing will pass unless a deal—or total surrender—is achieved.”

Earlier that day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters there is no imminent plan for U.S.–Iran negotiations, contradicting Trump’s earlier comment that talks would resume Monday afternoon. Baghaei added that Iran’s only current discussions are with Oman concerning the Strait of Hormuz.

The conflicting statements have heightened uncertainty over the peace‑talk process and the broader conflict, now in its sixth month.

Trump’s assertion about new negotiations came a day after he said on Truth Social that he had agreed to cancel a massive strike against Iran “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.” He said in the same post that Iran and other Middle Eastern countries had asked him to hold off on that attack because “the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

Trump has claimed dozens of times throughout the more‑than‑five‑month‑long war that a deal is at hand. No permanent deal has been signed, and a temporary ceasefire reached in June has fallen apart.

Trump has also repeatedly threatened to launch devastating strikes against Iran before backing off. After the latest example, oil prices on Monday fell and stocks surged.

BMI, a research unit of Fitch Solutions, said in a note Monday that a broader diplomatic understanding on reopening the Strait of Hormuz is still achievable this quarter, while raising the probability of its escalation scenario to 35% from 25%, citing mounting military, diplomatic and economic signs of rising U.S.-Iran tensions.

“Diplomatic progress is likely to be punctuated by periodic military flare-ups, while miscalculation by either side could trigger a renewed escalation,” BMI analysts wrote in a note. The firm said the key issue to watch is the future governance of the strait, as the Iran-Oman talks — potentially backed by Gulf states, China and the U.S. — point to efforts to build a post-conflict shipping framework.

Shipping risks persist even as diplomacy appears to be advancing. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre said it received a report of an incident 20 nautical miles (23 miles) northeast of Khasab, Oman — at the mouth of the strait — with a tanker’s master reporting an explosion in close proximity to the vessel at about 20:37 UTC Sunday (4:37 pm ET). The vessel and crew were safe and authorities are investigating, UKMTO said, advising ships to transit with caution.

The proposal Trump announced over the weekend calls for the U.S. and Iran to return to negotiations and continue ironing out some of the thorny issues that had derailed diplomatic efforts, according to The Associated Press, citing a regional official involved in the mediation efforts.

The official said the proposal also includes a reopening of the Hormuz Strait and halting attacks across the region, including by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq on the Arab Gulf countries and Jordan.

The U.S., for its part, will end its naval blockade on Iran and allow Tehran to export its oil, the official said, adding that no deal has been reached, although the mediation efforts remained underway.

Trump’s weekend reversal has lowered the temperature after days of escalating attacks across the Gulf. Kuwait said Saturday that Iranian forces launched a wave of drones within its airspace, with its military destroying multiple aircraft after Iran targeted critical infrastructure in the country’s north.

A parallel track with Muscat is also advancing. Iranian diplomats said Tehran was close to reaching a new arrangement with Oman to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a deal critical to preventing the war from escalating further, according to the Financial Times.

Iranian officials said negotiations over future management of the Hormuz Strait with Oman, which sits on the opposite shore of the waterway, are in their final stages. The agreed shipping route would be different from those used before, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Baghaei, adding that the new route was separate from the issue of the strait’s reopening or continued closure.

Technologies

Oil Prices Slide as Trump Halts Planned Iran Strike

Oil prices dropped after Trump cancelled a planned strike on Iran, with WTI down about 5% and Brent near 5% lower. He said the move followed requests from Tehran and regional allies for a pause while a deal shaping the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear program is negotiated.

Oil prices fell on Monday after President Donald Trump announced he had cancelled a planned strike on Iran. WTI futures dropped roughly 5% to $80.34 a barrel, while Brent slipped about 4.7% to $83.77 a barrel.

Trump said early Sunday he called off the strike after Iran and several Middle Eastern nations asked him to hold off, noting that the outlines of a deal had been agreed upon. He added that the prospective accord would entail the immediate, full opening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, according to his Truth Social post.

The president had been considering another round of strikes as diplomatic hopes waned since the conflict began on February 28. He said the U.S. and Iran would meet for talks on Monday, but Iran denied any scheduled negotiations with Washington, citing PressTV. Iran’s foreign‑ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei clarified that Tehran was only discussing shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz with Oman. In a follow‑up Truth Social message, Trump insisted that, regardless of Iran’s acknowledgment, the United States is indeed discussing a solution to a long‑standing problem created by Iran.

Technologies

Oil Prices Drop as Trump Cancels Planned Attack on Iran

Oil prices fell sharply after President Trump announced the cancellation of a planned strike on Iran, citing a new deal that would open the Hormuz Strait and end Iran’s nuclear threat.

Oil prices fell sharply on Monday after President Donald Trump announced that he had called off a planned strike on Iran.

West Texas Intermediate futures, the U.S. benchmark, slipped roughly 5% to close at $80.34 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international benchmark, declined 4.7% to settle at $83.77 a barrel.

Trump made the announcement early Sunday, saying he had canceled the strike following requests from Tehran and other Middle Eastern countries.

In a Truth Social post, he wrote: “We have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to.”

The president indicated that the proposed agreement would include the immediate, complete, and total opening of the Hormuz Strait, as well as an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.

Trump had been weighing additional strikes amid diminishing prospects for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict that began on Feb. 28. He stated that the U.S. and Iran would hold negotiations on Monday.

Tehran denied that talks were planned with Washington, according to state news outlet PressTV.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was only holding talks with Oman regarding the routes ships can use through the Strait of Hormuz.

In a subsequent Truth Social post, Trump added that whether “Iran wants to admit it or not, we are, in fact, talking of a solution to a problem that they have caused for decades.”