She may not be about to take up rowing anytime soon, but Olympian Morgan Lake believes athletics can learn a lot from the way British Rowing utilises data to identify future stars.

The Rio 2016 high jump ace was put through her paces along with long jump legend Greg Rutherford to see whether she had what it takes to make it through British Rowing’s talent ID programme.

With the help of British Rowing’s Official Analytics Partner, SAS, the Athlete Longitudinal Profiling (ALP) project has been developed to help streamline the talent identification and selection process and maintain the British Rowing’s dominance in the sport.

Lake experienced the British Rowing Specific World Class Start assessment, including strength and endurance tests, and the 21-year-old former heptathlete was impressed with the complexity of the system.

“I definitely have a newfound respect for rowers as some of the tests were really hard, the sitting arm press was difficult for me as my upper body strength isn’t what it used to be,” she said.

“I think it’s always good to see data and see how you can improve. It’s interesting to see the analysis from people who have achieved great things and compare it to how they did earlier in their career.

“I started well as my height and arm span measurements were good. Then we went into the arm press and leg press and the arm press was surprisingly closer to what they would look for in a rower.

“My aerobic capacity needs a bit of work though if I wanted to be a rower, so it’s not probably the sport I’m going into next if I was to move but it was interesting seeing the results.

“I think it’s a great partnership between British Rowing and SAS as they said they sometimes have 10,000 people doing the testing from small areas and identify people who wouldn’t otherwise have got into rowing.

“It identifies people who may never have considered rowing before and it’s great to see how by testing them for their height, aerobic capacity and power output can bring them into the sport.”

Since 2014, SAS has been working with British Rowing to improve its data analytics capacity and capabilities, allowing the team to optimise already successful pathway programmes.

The specific rowing tests and the ALP project can accurately determine whether Rutherford and Lake would stand a chance of progressing on to the World Class Start programme or not.

Both Rutherford and Lake had their measurements recorded before taking part in a strength test on a Concept2 DYNO machine and an endurance test on a Schwinn Airdyne arm/leg bike.

And after being pushed to her limits by the tests, Lake said a similar approach in athletics could prevent some talented athletes from slipping through the net in the future.

“A lot of people that I competed against as a multi-eventer start with the pentathlon and then move on to the heptathlon, going from five events to seven events,” she said.

“The addition of those two events sometimes causes people to drop out, maybe because they don’t have the coaching, or they don’t have the power for the extra height in the hurdles.

“I think if you get brought in from a young age, which is what the British Rowing partnership with SAS aims to do, then a lot more people would have carried on with the sport.”

Following silver medals at the Commonwealth Games and Athletics World Cup this year, Lake is currently in the thick of winter training as she sets her sights on next year’s World Championships.

“We’re in our sixth week of winter training now so I’ve just been dying – I’ve gone from barely being able to get up and down the stairs to getting some sort of athletic high jump work done,” she said.

“We will then go into the indoor season in January looking towards the European Championships in March, so I’m just looking at trying to stay healthy through winter training.

“I want to get that capacity because although the indoor season is important, we still have quite a long way to go until the World Championships in Doha in September.

“For me, the most important part of the year is going to be the outdoor season and I’m looking at the indoor season almost as a bonus, so I’m just working my way up to there.”

Morgan Lake was speaking at a SAS event at British Rowing’s training base in Caversham, Berkshire. SAS – the leader in analytics software and services – is the Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing and is playing an integral role in the development of British Rowing’s Athlete Longitudinal Profiling (ALP) project. For further information visit www.sas.com