Of air pong and athletes

This week is all about sport - and no, not football!* We’ve had a lot going on with Air Aware Labs and our work with athletes that we’d love to share. Next week we’ll get back to local work and data!

Readers will recall our work with London Marathon in April. Well, this ended up on the front cover and centre spread of Air Quality News last month. Why is it so important for the air quality industry? This was the first time such a major event had provided live air quality data to its runners and spectators. And runners and running events are pretty influential, so the hope is that the awareness raised here will trickle down to other walks of life. If you want to delve in more, we have a dedicated Marathon page.

One thing led to another, as they say, and two pretty momentous things happened over last weekend (and we’re not talking Sacha’s birthday or Louise’s flamenco show!)

Firstly, we were introduced to the Diamond League - the premier annual series in international athletics, comprising 14 one-day meetings held across cities including Shanghai, Rabat, Oslo, London, and Zurich. Athletes earn points throughout the season to qualify for the Diamond League Final, where champions are crowned in each discipline. We were invited to provide air quality data for the event in London - important for the health and performance of the athletes, as well as spectators.

As well as providing air quality data and insights for the big screen, we had a stand where we created the first ever “air pong” - a variation on beer pong with balls displaying all our favourite (!) pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, NO2, SO2, O3). It was a great engagement tool, particularly for children. Many were already aware about air pollution from learning at school, which was reassuring!

As for the second piece - Paula Radcliffe (who, as we reminded ourselves, held the women’s marathon world record for 16 years!), seemed to be aware of our work and data when speaking to a Times journalist about air pollution. So he tracked us down and Louise spoke to him for his article about running in heat and pollution, which came out last Friday. Sorry all The Times links are behind paywalls but you’ll forgive our excitement!

And in turn, this led to Louise being interviewed live on Times Radio early on Saturday. The focus was on the impact of ozone, which can build up during sunny days and impact respiratory health of runners. So the lives of air pollution enthusiasts - one up ready on webcam and the other ready to race out of the door to get to the Olympic Park for the Diamond League. Two fantastic opportunities!

Well, sorry for the cheesy ending, but “from A to B”! Alongside all this we’ve also been busy building and launching our Plan a Route feature! This enables anyone to put in a destination on AirTrack and get recommendations for the cleanest route. Check it out - we’d love feedback!

*We did have a bit of fun with the World Cup, creating this interactive Clean Air Cup - we’d love to know what you think of the data and whether it influenced the results! We’ve written up our thoughts here.