ARCOS
From data that already exists, to decisions still made on intuition today.
In archery the winner is not the one with the best shot, but the one who can repeat the right shot for longer. And repeating it does not mean freezing an identical gesture: motor-learning research says the opposite. True consistency is the athlete's ability to govern their own variations, shot after shot, adapting without losing the center. ARCOS measures exactly this, but at system level: the reliability, consistency and load of an entire population of athletes, not club by club.
What ARCOS is
ARCOS, Archery Reliability & Consistency Operating System, is the Performance & Health Intelligence system for an archery federation. The name states the method: to measure the reliability and consistency of athletes' performance and load. It is a deliberate choice, because archery is the sport of repetition. It does not reward the isolated exceptional shot, but the ability to reproduce the right shot hundreds of times, governing variability instead of being subject to it, under pressure and across an entire season.
ARCOS does not replace what already works: competition stays on Ianseo, training stays in the hands of the coaches. It adds the layer that is missing today, the one that gathers the scattered data, makes it comparable and turns it into knowledge, from the individual athlete to the aggregate view of the entire federation. No black boxes, and every value accompanied by its own uncertainty.
Born for archery, the ARCOS engine does not stop here. It holds for every precision sport built on highly repetitive gestures, wherever the result comes from repeating the same gesture while governing its variability: the target changes, not the method.
The winner is not the one with the best shot, but the one who repeats the right shot for longer and with less error.
From the competition file to the decision, in six steps
- 01Import. Once a competition is over, ARCOS imports the Ianseo export (XML/CSV) with a fail-safe pipeline: re-uploading the same file duplicates nothing.
- 02Matching. Every result is linked to the athlete through the membership number, and builds up their historical profile.
- 03Enrichment. Competition data is complemented by the training diary and wellness questionnaires, each with its own source and reliability.
- 04Index engine. An engine computes genuinely defined indices, on performance, load and shot dynamics, and makes them explainable.
- 05Synthesis. Automatic reading of the shot, intervention priorities and the Athlete Passport condense dozens of indices into a few concrete actions.
- 06Governance. The same indices aggregate by club, region, category and nation: the federation sees and decides across the entire ecosystem.
The problem it solves
Today sports data already exists in abundance, but it is fragmented and mute. Results live on Ianseo, training in notebooks or spreadsheets, wellness in the athlete's memory. No one holds them together, and so the most important decisions, who to select, when to lighten a load, what to work on, are still made on intuition.
Fragmented data
Competition, training and load do not talk to each other. Without a layer that unites them, the signal that matters is lost: the relationship between load, form and overload.
Performance and load kept apart
Treating them as separate worlds is the historical mistake. Load that is not adequately managed can contribute to a decline in performance, to reduced continuity, to injury and, together with other factors, to dropout.
Memory that scatters
With every change of coach or club, the athlete's history starts from zero. Years of knowledge are lost, and with them the ability to understand trajectories.
Untraceable decisions
Selections and interventions hard to explain and defend. Without objective, repeatable criteria, every choice is open to challenge.
The demo version is online, with fictional data for illustrative purposes.
See ARCOS →The operational areas
ARCOS is a single environment that covers the entire cycle, from the federation office to the athlete's individual shot.
Measures performance
Adaptive Glicko-2 rating with its uncertainty; reliability and consistency (coefficient of variation) across competitions and end by end; a Performance Ratio comparable across different formats; pacing profile and shot dynamics; bivariate grouping with probability of a 10 and drift of the mean point of impact.
Governs the load
Volume Load (arrows weighted by draw weight and session type), Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio (ACWR) with configurable thresholds, Allostatic Load integrated against individual capacity. It can surface changes in load, recovery and wellbeing that deserve attention before they become visible in performance.
Reads the shot and proposes corrections
The engine reads the data and returns a reading of the shot; the Error Library links each reading to technical corrective plans, whose effectiveness is measured on the real data of the athletes who followed them. Coaching based on evidence, not on intuition.
Identifies talent
Objective, repeatable selection: Age-Graded Performance, weights configurable for a senior squad or a youth pipeline, filters by level threshold and form. Transparent criteria, exportable and defensible.
Governs the ecosystem
Federation analytics: map of the archers, seasonal trends, gender gap, territorial talent development, generational turnover, distributions by division and category, and dropout rates read by category, age and region. Where and when the federation loses its athletes finally becomes visible, at a glance.
Certifies the data
Data quality and completeness measured at the source, by organizer: granularity (arrow level, end or total) determines a completeness score. The ranking comes from verified data, not scattered sheets.
One methodological choice runs through all of ARCOS: no number is presented as absolute truth. Every index carries its confidence band, high where data is dense, lower where more competitions are needed, and the aggregate views respect k-anonymity, so the individual is never re-identifiable within a group figure. An honest system also declares how much it knows.
The Athlete Passport
Every athlete has a digital Passport: a living document that gathers in a single place everything the data tells about them, and that follows them across their entire career. It is the memory that is lost today with every change of coach or club, rebuilt, coherent and always at hand.
What it contains
Sporting identity and rating; reliability and consistency indices; complete competition history; load, recovery and condition with their trajectory over time; reading of the shot and intervention priorities.
How to read it
Every statistic carries its own confidence band, high, medium or low, based on how much data supports it. The Passport always distinguishes the solid figure from the still-fragile estimate.
What it is for
Explainable feedback for athlete and coach (the why, not just the how much), continuity of the sporting history over time, and an objective basis for selection, load management and planning.
What improves, for everyone
For the Federation
- Objective, transparent and defensible selection
- Load management on a population basis
- Resources allocated where they produce results
- Institutional memory that does not scatter
- Measurable territorial talent development
- Data quality certified at the source
- Technical decisions documented and repeatable
For the Clubs
- Benchmark their own athletes against national data
- Technical readings and corrective plans with measured effectiveness
- Managed load: fewer dips in form, more continuity
- Tools from a major technical center, even for small clubs
- Recognition for the coaches who achieve results
- Early identification of their own talent
- A common language with the federation structure
For the Athletes
- A Passport that follows them through their career
- Explainable feedback: they know why, not just how much
- Monitored load, with early overload signals
- Growth paths built on their own data
- Clear, verifiable selection criteria
- Continuity: their own history does not start from zero
- Motivation: seeing progress, competition after competition
Transparent, traceable, verifiable methods
ARCOS uses existing methods, declared adaptations and new composite indicators. Every metric exposes its definition, formula, provenance, limits and validation status.
| Dimension | Real method | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Athlete strength | Glicko-2 (adapted) | Documented adaptation of Glicko-2 to the competitive context of archery: rating with uncertainty, the basis for rankings and selection, updated competition after competition. |
| Reliability and consistency | Coefficient of variation (CV) | How regular performance is across competitions and end by end: the heart of the reliability & consistency concept. |
| Load | ACWR (Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio) | A ratio of recent to historical load, used as a descriptive indicator within a multifactorial system. Thresholds are configurable and are not interpreted as universal safety boundaries. |
| Work volume | Volume Load | Arrows weighted by draw weight and session type: the real external load, not a simple count. |
| Integrated load | Allostatic Load | Cumulative wear (physical, cognitive, contextual) relative to individual capacity. |
| Shot dynamics | AR(1) · ARCH effect | Detects error persistence, anomalous sequences and performance instability. |
| Grouping and precision | MPI drift · CEP | Shift of the mean point of impact and probability of hitting the 10 from the bivariate grouping. |
| Age and potential | Age-Graded Performance | Performance relative to what is expected for the age: it corrects the maturation bias, key for the youth pipeline. |
| Competition sequence | Runs test (Wald-Wolfowitz) | Distinguishes a homogeneous competition from a clustered one, at the same mean. |
| Confidentiality | k-anonymity | Aggregates are visible only if the group is large enough not to re-identify the individual. |
The same logic applies to wellness monitoring, which rests on validated tools from sport psychometrics (perceived stress, affect, social support and coach-athlete relationship scales). ARCOS does not create metrics out of nothing: it relates them, computes them rigorously and makes them useful.
Built to adapt
This version is calibrated on the archery of World Archery, World Archery Europe and FITARCO. The engine, however, is one. Bringing it to IFAA or FIARC does not mean rebuilding it: it means changing the field/target variables and the native scoring, which is already integrated. Different variables, same outputs. The rules of the game change, not the method that measures them.
A concrete example, on the FIARC field course. With the same field/target variables the system identifies the most punishing stations, the ones where scores collapse; it standardizes difficulty across different competitions, valuing each club's home ground; and it shows every athlete their weak points on real competition data. On top of everything else. Same engine, another discipline.
And the same logic holds beyond archery. Every precision sport built on highly repetitive gestures, where the result comes from governing the variability of one's own gesture, speaks the language of ARCOS. The system is configured, not rewritten.
The fastest way to understand ARCOS is to see it working.
See ARCOS →The opportunities
Training on real data
Coaches and federation staff who train on real cases and historical series, not on theoretical slides. You learn to read a profile, to recognize a dangerous load, to choose the right intervention on the data, not on feelings.
Research
A longitudinal, coherent, fine-grained dataset enables studies on load, motor learning, sport psychometrics and performance dynamics, in partnership with universities, institutions and sports-medicine centers.
Innovation
A foundation for the athlete's digital twin, predictive form models, counterfactual simulations and new validated indices. A platform that grows with knowledge, instead of stiffening.
Analysis
From the single arrow to a nation's trend: decision dashboards for the technical direction, the staff and competition organization. Every level sees what it needs, at the right depth.
Shared protocols
Shared load thresholds and early alerts turned into federation protocols, applied uniformly. Load management stops depending on the individual coach's sensibility and becomes a standard.
Interventions where they are needed
Resources, technical and financial, go to the athletes and territories that truly need them, identified by the data and not by visibility. Effectiveness and fairness in the same gesture.
Why ARCOS, why now
Three conditions meet today for the first time. The data already exists and is digital: competitions produce structured exports, athletes record training and wellness. The methods are mature: adaptive ratings, load management and statistical models are validated and available. And the demand is pressing: load management, defensible selection and talent development are no longer a luxury, but a competitive necessity. Only the layer that unites the three is missing. That is where ARCOS sits.
What you see today, what is coming
The online version is a demo: it shows part of the functionality, on fictional data for illustrative purposes. The full engine does more, and it grows.
Some features are already in the works. First among them is Coach Connect: the direct bridge between athlete and coach, where the coach assigns the training and the results are recorded and re-read by the system. It is the piece that closes the loop, from data to indication to verification, and it will arrive in the full version along with others.
The most frequent questions
How is it different from a club management tool?
A management tool sees its own athletes; ARCOS sees the entire ecosystem, talent, loads and intervention effectiveness, across the whole population at once, and makes them comparable.
Do you need new instrumentation to start?
No. ARCOS works on the data that already exists: Ianseo results, training diary, wellness questionnaires. Fine capture of the shot enables the most advanced indices, but it is optional.
Are the indices invented?
No. ARCOS uses established methods (Glicko-2, ACWR, coefficient of variation, Allostatic Load, AR(1)/ARCH models, runs test, k-anonymity) applied rigorously to archery.
Does ARCOS give medical diagnoses?
No. ARCOS is not a medical tool and does not provide clinical diagnoses or prescriptions. It reads technical and load data and proposes technical readings and corrections, in support of coaches and medical staff.
Can it be used for another sport or another federation?
Yes. The engine is the same: the field/target variables and the scoring change. The current version is for World Archery, World Archery Europe and FITARCO, and it adapts to IFAA and FIARC, and more generally to every precision sport built on repetitive gestures.
Is the online one the full version?
No. It is a demo with fictional data that shows part of the system. Features like Coach Connect, the athlete-coach bridge for assigning training and recording results, are in development along with others.
How does it safeguard an honest reading of the data?
Every value carries a confidence band based on how much data supports it, and aggregates respect k-anonymity. The system always distinguishes the solid figure from the still-fragile estimate.
A proprietary project
ARCOS is an original project conceived and developed by Matteo Campagna. The software, the documentation, the content, the visual identity and the methodological specifications are protected under applicable law. Unauthorized reproduction or use of the materials is prohibited. Project and document are published on .
Anyone interested can write to discuss possible collaborations: [email protected].
The data visible in the demo application is a fictional, invented sample, created purely for illustrative purposes to show the system's features. It is not real data; any reference to real people is purely coincidental.
Take your federation from data to evidence.
ARCOS bridges the data you already have and the decisions still made on intuition. The fastest way to understand it is to see it.
See ARCOS →