Nelio Alfano Moura is one of the best jump coaches in the world, coaching athletes from all over the world. Moura has been part of the Olympics every time since Sydney 2000.
Throughout his career, he has coached 3 Olympic medalists – 2 golds: Maureen Maggi and Irving Saladino at Beijing 2008, and 1 silver, Do you know the silver medalist’s name? a handful of finalists, and many other medalists and finalists competing at World Championships.
Nelio discovered Dartfish for the first time, when invited to a conference at the USOC (United States Olympic Committee) in 2002.
“Dartfish looked like magic to me! The conference participants were given a demo version of the software, and I began using it. Since then, I have never stopped using Dartfish.”
In a recent interview, Nelio explained to us how he used Dartfish to enhance his athlete’s skills and prepare them for competition. We graciously thank him for his testimonial.
Can you introduce yourself and your sporting success?
I am a coach, working mainly with the horizontal jumps (long jump and triple jump) for almost 40 years now. I began my coaching career early; I was 19 at the time. Even though I had the opportunity to represent the Brazilian National Team in international competition, it became clear to me that I didn’t have the talent to become an international athlete as a senior, so I decided to invest in my education and to start my coaching career. I have a master’s degree in Human Performance, but always my focus has been coaching.
In Brazil, I work with my wife, Tania, and our daughter Larissa (who has just finished her master’s as well) guiding some of the best jumpers in the country. I’ve also been working for the Chinese Athletics Association since 2019.
How do you use Dartfish?
In training and competition, I sometimes use the mobile app (myDartfish Express) to capture and quickly review the athletes’ performances, but I try to avoid being overly-analytical at the track to focus on the athlete.
After the session though, and depending on the kind of analysis I need, I use Dartfish technology to do a deep dive, extracting detailed information. I then forward it to the athletes or to other coaches.
Following the triple jump Olympic silver medal won by one of my athletes in Tokyo, I used Dartfish. Not only did I extract data from his performance, but I also produced some of the illustrations used for an article that I published with some colleagues in the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. One of the illustrations is a Stromotion of the actual silver medal jump.
Dartfish is extremely user-friendly, but at the same time very powerful. For technical events that are performed in high velocities, for example, the long and triple jump, Dartfish tools allow us to analyze subtle aspects of the technique that sometimes we miss when just replaying a video in slow motion.
Moreover, with all its annotative tools, it’s very useful to communicate to the athletes what is good (and what is not so good) about their performances, and what we can do to improve the quality of the movement.
“Dartfish allows me to keep an extensive athletes, opponents, and competitions database which helps me make informed decisions to improve my athletes’ techniques.”
What are your main goals for 2023?
This is going to be another busy season…. just like 2022. I will have athletes focusing at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, the Asian Games in Hangzhou, and the Pan-American Games in Santiago.
“Dartfish is a powerful tool that allows me to study the events and to communicate with my peers and my athletes.”
Nelio Moura,
Coach of two Olympic long jump championships and of a silver medalist in the triple jump.
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