Female athletes to the fore at the BIHUB Congress

At this year's edition of the BIHUB Congress, which will take place on 8-12 November, female athletes will be the common theme that brings together the various conferences on science, technology and business in sport. 

Since 2016, the Barça Innovation Hub, the FC Barcelona platform dedicated to research, knowledge and sporting innovation, has brought together in various conferences the best specialists in the field of sport to promote innovation. 

This year, coinciding with a year of success for the FC Barcelona Women's team, the conferences grouped together as of last year under the Sports Tomorrow Congress will place women athletes firmly at the centre of the programmed content for this year's edition. The Sports Tomorrow Congress (Wom+n) in 2021 will take place on 8-12 November and will be a mixture of meetings in person at Camp Nou in small groups and virtual sessions. All of the Congress will be available online. 

The Congress aims to bring into focus the Club's experience with women's sport - currently FC Barcelona has 783 female athletes, amongst football teams and the amateur teams - and will welcome specialists experts to bring together common ideas, projects and advances in the field. The objective is for the club, aside from its sporting successes, to become via the BIHUB an engine for the attraction of innovation in women's sport. 

Topics for the year's programme include subjects related to business, technology, data analysis, training methodology, performance, nutrition, physiotherapy, medicine and a new area named Gastrosport, with combines sporting nutrition and gastronomy. In all of this the role of women's sport will have a key role, especially in the field of medicine, physiotherapy, performance and nutrition in which the latest research and studies on women's sport will be shared. 

These are areas in which BIHUB has been working for a while now via different projects in its Health Area. Highlights include a study carried out in conjunction with FIFA and professional footballers at the Club to determine the impact of football and adequate nutrition on the body composition of athletes. Aside from the project with FIFA, the Club is also carrying out several of its own studies in partnership with other international experts, principally concerned with the reaction of players to training and competition and how they can alter their hormonal profile, menstrual cycle and physical performance.