Ochy and Juventus Forward: How AI Biomechanics Is Reshaping Elite Performance

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Image Credit: Ochy

In sports technology, evolution is rarely linear. The story of Ochy’s journey from running retail to global football is proof that the right bet, on athletes’ movement and real, usable data, can fundamentally shift the landscape.

For stakeholders in Australia’s football, performance and tech sectors, Ochy’s rapid rise in 2025 and its recent partnering with Juventus FC in 2026 is a window into where athlete monitoring and retail technology are headed.

Scaling Insights: Ochy’s Breakout Year

Over the past year, Ochy has infiltrated key segments in the running industry, carving a presence at Paris, London, Berlin, and Frankfurt marathons, and finding its tech preferred by a spectrum of runners, coaches, retailers, and medical professionals. Through strong showings at VivaTech, CES, ISPO, and the Running Industry Alliance Summit, Ochy’s team grew as fast as its presence, validating the bet that running, like every sport rooted in movement, deserves better, more actionable biomechanical insight.

This wasn’t a single-shot innovation. In 2025, feature launches mattered. Back-view analysis unlocked new clinical insight into pelvis control and knee alignment, bringing science to runners during shoes-on demos at expos and in-store. The proprietary Shoe Recommendation Engine reimagined fitting: translating gait data into smart recommendations reduced guesswork for both runners and retailers, giving shops the power to offer data-backed advice. Ochy’s admin panel and shoe model management brought scalable control, inventory mapping and data tracking to retailers, sealing the loop between analysis, product, and the consumer experience.

From Demo App to Connected Ecosystem

The future shift will be a seamless blend between product and infrastructure. With a connected Web App, Ochy finally became an ecosystem: retailers, brands, and performance clinics could seamlessly move from mobile gait analysis to web-based management.

By the numbers, the results were compelling. More than 85,000 analyses in 2025, an average of 102 customers assessed each month per running shop, and runners using the system on themselves three times every thirty days. Side-view analysis remained the most popular tool; user feedback drove a sharper brand and clearer message. Partnerships with HOKA, Runners Need, England Athletics, and more signalled that Ochy’s core premise had strong industry buy-in.

A Mission That Became Personal and Global

Ochy’s founding story still resonates through its technology. CEO and co-founder Khaldon Evans’s injuries as a college athlete underpinned the platform’s core belief: movement science should not be reserved for elite labs or expensive research centres. Real prevention and performance require objective insight, and lack of access shouldn’t compromise health or career progression. This message- that running form matters, moved from blog posts and marathon expos into retail, and now, with its deal in Turin, across the football pitch.

AI in Motion: The Partnership with Juventus

The leap into elite football began at Allianz Stadium in February 2026, as Ochy was named an official partner within the Juventus Forward innovation initiative. Chosen from dozens of startups, being part of Juventus’ Forward Squad marks not just commercial success, but institutional validation: a professional club, renowned for its vision and resources, was betting on AI-powered markerless biomechanics.

For Ochy, the transition is logical. Football is the ultimate application for running science, it’s a sport defined by repetitive sprints, high-load pivoting, changes of direction, and cumulative stress over long seasons. Movement mechanics drive output and underpin injury prevention.

With Ochy, footballers and staff access lab-quality analysis using only a camera. The system translates match or training videos into insights about gait efficiency, asymmetry, and injury risk, all powered by proprietary AI. What was confined to the running shop or the track now becomes central to decisions about player rehab, boot selection, and long-term load monitoring.

Why This Partnership Matters for Football and Beyond

Juventus’ choice to integrate startups like Ochy demonstrates tech’s new role at elite clubs: not just for post-game data but for all-year-round management. The pitch is now the laboratory, and decisions in coaching, physio, and even retail reflect biomechanical data.

For Australia, there are direct implications. NPL and A-League clubs, currently facing constraints in resources and analytics staffing, can benefit from democratised biomechanics. Markerless solutions such as Ochy’s break the dependency on wearables, making high-quality insight available during regular training on public grounds. In Australia’s multicultural, injury-prone football ecosystem, AI-powered, multilingual, and field-tested technology stands to drive better player outcomes, sharper recruitment, and improved return-to-play protocols.

A Retail Revolution for Sport

Ochy’s shoe recommendation engine and admin tools make specialist retail a central part of the performance loop. By tying gait analysis to in-store inventory, Ochy ensures that runners and footballers alike get the shoe, support, and advice that fit their actual, measured movement.

The partnership with adidas via the adiClub program introduced Ochy’s insights to loyalty customers worldwide, proving that biomechanics is as relevant to the mass market as it is to the professional clinic. By allowing adiClub members access to Ochy’s analysis with redeemed points, the company blurred lines between community, data, and product.

If AI is to be trusted as the next frontier for sport, Ochy’s work in 2025 and its expansion into elite football in 2026 represent the standard. The transition from running to football is not just logical; it was inevitable, and every stakeholder in Australian sport should pay attention to what comes next.

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Mizuno’s Australian gamble: can a 120-year-old brand break through?

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Image Credit: Mizuno

When Mizuno unveiled a mural of Socceroos captain Harry Souttar on a Richmond wall during the 2026 World Cup, the company’s name did not appear on the artwork. The artist, Rory Ledge, painted Souttar as the “Minister of Defence” behind a brick wall. Channel 7 and Channel 9 turned up. The Herald Sun ran it in their Saturday edition. Mizuno’s brand director called it “mainstream awareness” without paid media.

The mural sat within a broader push by the Osaka-based company to expand in Oceania. For the fiscal year ending March 2026, Mizuno reported sales of ¥259 billion, up 7.8 per cent year-on-year, with net income of ¥18.4 billion representing 20.5 per cent growth . Operating profit rose to ¥22.6 billion. The Asia and Oceania segment is central to the company’s medium-term plan, which targets net sales of ¥290 billion by fiscal 2027.

The growth imperative

Australian football has not historically been kind to specialist boot brands. Nike, Adidas and Puma dominate retail shelves. A-Leagues collective bargaining agreements and club deals have locked in incumbents. For a brand without the marketing budgets of its competitors, the path to relevance runs through the players.

Mizuno has grown its Australian ambassador base from one athlete to around 20 across the A-Leagues in recent seasons. Melbourne City’s Tolgay Arslan, who played in the Bundesliga and Serie A before arriving in Australia, told Front Page Football: “If I discovered these boots ten years ago, I would wear these boots overseas in my career.” Western United midfielder Angus Thurgate called them “the comfiest boots I’ve ever worn”.

The mural moment

Richmond was chosen for the mural because of its location. The suburb sits at the centre of Melbourne’s sporting precinct, five minutes’ walk from the MCG and AAMI Park. It is already home to murals of AFL players. Rowena Corner Store owner Con, who agreed to host the artwork, had previously welcomed murals of Dusty Martin and an AFLW player.

“We didn’t have access to Harry because he was in the US competing,” brand director Rishi said. “We couldn’t do a photoshoot. So we had to be clever. The best ideas come from real time, aligned with what the public discourse looks like. Once we saw his Wikipedia page updated to refer to him as the Minister of Defence, we knew we could play into this.”

Ledge incorporated an existing window into the design to create a net behind Souttar’s figure. The mural appeared the morning of the Paraguay match, when Australia’s clean sheet sent them into the knockout phase.

The World Cup provided a massive backdrop. The Socceroos’ run captivated the nation: 4.84 million Australians tuned in to the Paraguay match, making it the most-watched World Cup match in SBS history at the time, with an average audience of 3.086 million . The final reached 5.26 million viewers, and cumulative tournament reach hit 18.04 million— 64 per cent of Australia’s population. SBS director of sport Ken Shipp said: “We’ve never seen engagement at this level.” Mizuno spent comparatively little and had Channel 7 and Channel 9 on site.

The commercial question

For a brand with limited marketing firepower, organic PR coverage is the prize. The question for the company’s Oceania division, still in growth mode, is whether a mural and a handful of player endorsements can convert into sustained commercial traction. Retail partnerships with Ultra Football, which has created a dedicated Mizuno space at its Melbourne store, suggest the company is thinking beyond campaigns.

Mizuno’s European expansion has taken a different path. The company signed a five-year deal to become AS Monaco’s technical equipment partner from the 2025-26 season, its first entry into Ligue 1. It already has a presence in Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A. In Australia, institutional partnerships are harder to secure. The approach has been slower: build through athletes, then through community, then through culture.

The Queensland government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mizuno in March 2026 to explore the Japan-Australia Sports & Health Innovation Exchange (JASHIE), a two-year partnership focused on sport and health innovation . The agreement supports Queensland’s preparations for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The mural campaign reflected a broader trend in sporting brand marketing, where IP restrictions and athlete availability increasingly demand creative solutions. “I love what Levi’s did because they were able to lean into their brand codes and tell what I believe to be the most memorable advertising story from the World Cup,” Rishi said. “This is a different page out of fundamentally the same playbook.”

Mizuno’s boots are not cheap. The Made-in-Japan models retail well above competitors’ offerings. The brand’s pitch rests on quality and heritage, not price or volume. That is a harder sell in a country where discounting dominates and cost-of-living pressures are squeezing households.

The Souttar mural will eventually fade or be painted over. Mizuno is betting that by the time it does, enough Australian football fans will have noticed the three stripes’ quieter rival.

Bentleigh Greens and Metricon Bring Local Business Community Together Through Networking Initiative

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Image Credit: One-Nil Media

Bentleigh Greens FC has reinforced its commitment to supporting its community beyond football, partnering with Metricon Homes to host a business networking evening designed to strengthen relationships between local businesses, sponsors and club stakeholders.

 

A unique setting for meaningful connections

Held inside one of Metricon’s display homes, the Bentleigh Greens Business Networking Night welcomed around 60 local business owners, club partners and community leaders for an evening focused on connection, collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Rather than a traditional function space, Metricon opened the doors of one of its display homes, creating a unique networking environment that highlighted how the space could be transformed into a premium venue while providing guests with a relaxed setting to build professional relationships.

The event reflects a growing trend across community football, where clubs are increasingly positioning themselves as platforms for business engagement and local economic development, alongside their role in delivering participation opportunities on the pitch.

Guests also heard from strategic futurist Marcus Barber, who delivered a presentation examining the growing influence of artificial intelligence on modern business. His insights encouraged attendees to consider how emerging technologies are reshaping industries and the importance of preparing for future change.

 

Creating value beyond sponsorship

While commercial outcomes were never the primary objective, the evening was designed to create long-term value by fostering meaningful relationships between businesses connected to the Bentleigh Greens community.

Early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with several attendees already establishing new contacts and beginning discussions around potential collaborations.

The initiative also highlights Metricon’s broader commitment to supporting local communities beyond residential construction. By partnering with Bentleigh Greens and providing the venue, the company helped facilitate an event that encouraged learning, networking and stronger community connections.

 

Football clubs as community business hubs

For community football clubs, initiatives such as these demonstrate how partnerships can extend beyond traditional sponsorship models. By creating opportunities for local businesses to engage with one another, clubs can strengthen their commercial networks while delivering tangible value to sponsors and the wider community.

As football clubs continue to explore new ways of engaging stakeholders off the field, events like the Bentleigh Greens Business Networking Night illustrate how sport can serve as a catalyst for meaningful business relationships and long-term community growth.

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