Athlete with spinal cord injury from Dutch PULSE RACING wins CYBATHLON 2020 Global Edition

Amsterdam Free University's PULSE Racing team wins the functional electrostimulation (FES) discipline at the CYBATHLON 2020 Global Edition. Athlete Sander Koomen set a personal record to take first place.

CYBATHLON is a platform for people with disabilities, technology providers and the public to exchange information. The platform aims to raise awareness about the challenges faced by people with disabilities. The platform also promotes the development of assistive technology.

Head Professor of Sensory and Motor Systems at ETH Zurich initiated CYBATHLON in 2013. The idea for the platform arose after athletes with disabilities achieved top performances. Think of the first runner with a motor leg prosthesis who climbed the Chicago Willis Tower and the first runner with lower body paralysis who ran the London Marathon with the help of an exoskeleton. The CYBATHLON race was first organised in 2016 in the Swiss town of Kloten, near Zurich. Since then, the event has been organised annually.

One of the participants in the CYBATHLON 2020 Global Edition is the PULSE Racing Team. This team was set up to further develop functional electrostimulation (FES) for people with spinal cord injury. The Free University of Amsterdam points out that a spinal cord injury can cause all kinds of physical problems. These include inability to walk and reduced mobility, as well as reduced fitness, disrupted blood circulation and a high risk of pressure sores. This can negatively affect patients' quality of life and personal well-being.

Active exercise can have positive effects on both blood flow, fitness and psychological states of patients. These beneficial effects prompted the Free University of Amsterdam to set up the PULSE Racing team. The team was set up in the 2017-2018 academic year by the university's exercise science students. They set themselves the goal of taking FES cycling to another level together with athletes with spinal cord injury - referred to by the team as 'sleepers'. In doing so, the team aims to give mobility and vitality back to people with spinal cord injury. A level team is put together annually, consisting of exercise science and engineering students.

FES is a technique to control active movement. In practice, this means that muscles tighten themselves and thus are not moved passively. These muscle tensions are made possible by conducting short electric currents through surface electrodes on the skin to the nerves. This stimulates the muscles, causing a muscle contraction. FES is suitable not only for people with spinal cord injury, but also for patients with, for example, a stroke or another neurological condition with muscle loss as a symptom.

Athlete Sander Koomen has emerged victorious within the functional electrostimulation (FES) discipline at the CYBATHLON 2020 Global Edition. Koomen has a spinal cord injury and cannot control his own lanes as a result. FES, however, makes this possible. He rides a Berkelbike, a special bicycle. Using FES, the right leg muscles are stimulated at the right time, creating a pedalling cycle.

On 8 November, Sander cycled a personal record: a time of 2 minutes and 40 seconds. This was faster than the 2016 CYBATHLON winner and ultimately proved to be the fastest time at the 2020 edition as well. Koomen was a whopping 20 seconds faster than the number two. "Sander and our team PULSE Racing have worked hard over the past few years. We are the only team made up entirely of students. To then achieve such a result is incredible. We are immensely proud!" said the PULSE Racing team manager.

The winners in other categories are:

Powered Arm Prosthesis Race (ARM)

Brain-Computer Interface Race (BCI)

Powered Exoskeleton Race (EXO)

Functional Electrical Stimulation Bike Race (FES)

Further information about CYBATHLON and the CYBATHLON 2020 Global Edition is available here. You can read more about the PULSE Racing team here.

Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel