Arguably sport science is in its infancy, with the first robust publications truly directed at the subject appearing many years after physiological and medical related treatises relevant to similar subject areas. While understanding in biomedical sciences has progressed almost exponentially since the advent of modern biology of the Watson and Crick era, the same can’t really be said for sport science at its application edge. Often sport science appears undertaken with little reference to more progressive and better work in fundamental fields of biomedical endeavor. This does not necessarily need to be the case. Much work of high caliber in biomedicine and engineering can be piggy-backed on to do innovative work at the applied end of sport science. While innovation is not always viewed as novel or pure in the academic sport science perspective it can both escalate and accelerate applied adoption of good fundamental concepts and indeed correct poorly used and extrapolated ones. A good example of the latter is the understanding (and application) of the hormone testosterone. The clear results in muscle hypertrophy from supraphysiological abuse led to the sport science concept that small changes in natural levels would be equally important, probably an erroneous notion of what testosterone does. Excellent work at the biomedical level has challenged this and as a consequence in turn driven elite athlete applied work demonstrating other important sporting applicable roles of natural testosterone more in keeping also with a biological evolutionary perspective. Similarly an examination of a wealth of biomedical data compared to new descriptive data collected in elite athletes suggest that elites function quite differently to the often used student population sport science study. Rapid progress in engineering and technology has also driven sporting applications that have undoubtedly assisted in the color of medals obtained – while it has become a sporting cliché -centimeters, hundreds of seconds and minimal percentages that appear marginal do increment to a measurable gain. Knowledge on athletic performance is rapidly evolving through the miniaturization of electronics, growth in processing power and automation methods which are now common place in the field. Such technological advances permit the rapid testing and application of fundamental biomedical ideas in an ecologically valid environment in which the athlete and coach practice and thrive. These advances provide a platform for greater adherence and commitment from athlete and coach to a systematic process of investigation in pursuit of performance development. Although much work still remains, technology is beginning to provide the capability that allows an integrated systems approach to understanding how individuals respond to the stressors of training and competition in a continuous and longitudinal manner. Our talk will discuss some of these examples in detail and argue that harvesting fundamental work in bio-medicine and engineering can promote high caliber applied sport science research that is both more scientifically robust and more quickly adoptable to sporting gains. These two make extremely good partners and have, and can further, push elite athlete practice forward.