A data journalism round-up from the Winter Olympics - Interhacktives

With the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in full flow (I really want to say ‘snow’), we see again how global sporting events give news organisations the opportunity to showcase their data storytelling prowess. Lets skate our way through a few of the best examples that have caught Interhacktives’ eye over the past week.

The New York Times (NYT) has decided to use the games to launch it’s new augmented reality (AR) campaign. In their quest to create a ‘bridge between our physical and digital worlds’ the NYT’s immersive platform storytelling team uses activations highlighting figure skating, speed skating, snowboarding and ice hockey to illustrate a technical aspect of each sport. Walking around each athlete opens new points of view while presenting the viewer with data on a particular aspect of the sport. They’ve used an integrated approach to the piece, placing each AR experience inside a traditional story narrative in an effort, we presume, to slowly introduce the technology to their readership.

The full AR experience is available only on iPhones (6S, SE and newer) and iPads but will come to Android soon. Click here for system requirements.

FiveThirtyEight never disappoints when it comes to novel ways of looking at sports data. Their clever take on the perennial medals table tells the reader not just how each country is doing but also their medal expectation and projected final medal count. Visual journalist, Ella Koeze, takes a look at how men and women would compare if they skied against each while Tom Perrota looks at the Dutch’s dominance of speed-skating – a topic that had NBC anchor Katie Coutic apologising after stating that “skating is an important mode of transportation in a city like Amsterdam” – It’s not.

You just can't make this up. NBC opening ceremony coverage. Katie Couric talks about why The Netherlands is so good at speed skating as The Netherlands enters the stadium. And this folks is why Americans are less bright about the rest of the world as they spread fake news! pic.twitter.com/7YC5deTl2w

Our favourite piece of Pyeongchang sports data journalism comes again from the NYT data team with their delightful giant slalom visual. We get to see an animated version of American Mikaela Shiffrin’s victory in the event with all skiers shown completing the course individually, but competing at the same time in a sped-up animation – lots of fun!

And last but not least…as the videos from Boston Dynamics have shown, the robot uprising is nigh and when our metal overlords have taken over the planet it looks like they’ll be having their own Winter Botlympics….

Next week we’ll have piece on the data explosion in sport and the growing field of sports data journalism.