Leslie Law turns to technology

Britain’s Olympic gold medal winning event rider Leslie Law has often put in some immaculate performances, and in Athens proved that he had the edge to do so just when it counted.

A new technical training method has been widely feted for its importance in helping the British team take the Silver, and Law take the individual Gold.

The five members of the eventing squad have been using technology to analyse their performances using digital video for some time. Leslie can now capture and work with that in training to easily identify areas for improvement.

Law films himself riding his horses, including Shear L’Eau, and is then able to watch the footage immediately, streamed to his wireless Tablet PC. This enables him to check his performance and correct any mistakes straight away. A Tablet PC is a variety of a laptop running a special version of Microsoft Windows XP that allows users to write data directly onto the screen.

“Being able to visualise and compare my training sessions is a big advantage,” said Law. “In the past, video sessions were recorded during the day and then watched in the evening. This has allowed us to take it a step further and look at it, there and then, which has made the training sessions much more productive.”

The Tablet PC also allowed Leslie to keep in touch and continue to run his event horse training business back in the UK while he was away competing for his country in Athens.

• Microsoft’s Windows XP powered Tablet PC is a portable, wireless computer with a large tablet screen that can be hand written on with the specially designed tablet PC pen. Available in a variety of models by manufacturers including HP, Toshiba and Motion, it is priced at between £1,000 – £1,600.