AIS Biomechanist Dr Bruce Mason has an important job. He is the trouble shooter for the best athletes in the world – the Australian swim team.

Jess Schipper a little slow off the blocks? She sees Bruce.

Grant Hackett wants improvement? He sees Bruce.

Australian relay teams need to sharpen up their changeovers? You guessed it - Bruce.

Well maybe not only Bruce, the new AIS pool and technology also helps.

The AIS Aquatic Testing, Training and Research Unit ATTRU) may not have the most alluring name, but to the world’s swimmers it is certainly the most alluring pool in the world.

Opened in 2007 at a cost of $17million, the new AIS Aquatics Centre has the capacity to make significant differences to our swimmers performances.

‘Take Jessica Schipper’, says Bruce, who is head of the AIS ATTRU (Aquatic Testing, Training and Research Unit) ‘we started working with her, and our technology identified problems which when corrected improved her start by over .2 of a second.’

That may not sound much, but in a race that could be decided by hundredths of a second – two tenths is a big deal.

‘Even an experienced swimmer like Grant Hackett, who has been around the sport at the elite level for so long, has said he learned so much about what he is doing right and what he is doing wrong during his time being tested in the pool. He really believed he gained a lot from the work he did here,’ says Bruce.

Relays are an area that the pool can have a huge impact. ‘In the US relays are in their culture. Here we don’t do them as much, so we need to use science to gain some ground.’ Bruce mentions testing and analysing the athletes force on the starting blocks and timing gates, we have been able to get the changeover times to .15 of second – right where we need it to be.

Of course Bruce doesn’t work on his own – he has a team of young enthusiastic researchers who all work with the various coaches and sports scientist from each swimmer’s state.

‘That is the advantage we have in Australia, we recognise how important it is to work together. So if we work with a swimmer from Queensland, then we make sure that their coach and the sport scientists they work with on a day to day basis are involved as well.’

Hopefully the first week of the Olympics will see the fruit of that cooperation.