Tim Cook meets Saina Nehwal, learns how Apple Watch helps athletes. Watch

Apple CEO Tim Cook got to hear a first-hand account of how the Apple Watch can help professional athletes during his ongoing visit to India. Cook has so far had a packed schedule since landing in India earlier this week – he met Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran on the first day of his visit and inaugurated the Apple Store in BKC on the second. Tim Cook also visited the badminton court at Mumbai Cricket Association, BKC, where he met badminton stars Saina Nehwal, Pullela Gopichand and Parupalli Kashyap.

The CEO of Apple shared the Apple Watch story in an exclusive interaction with News18 during his visit to the Mumbai Cricket Association.

When asked about how the Apple Watch has been able to create an impact on the lives of professional athletes and fitness-focused users, Tim Cook replied, “You know, it started with focusing on wellness and creating the three rings --the move, stand, and your exercise bar. It went from there to heart rate and detecting AFib, and of course notifications came early on as well. And so it has just expanded to cover the waterfront of people's needs.”

“It's so great for me to come to India and hear how it's used in actual training. But I did notice, every day from people about how the Apple Watch helped them in finding out that they had AFib. And they told me that their doctors told them they would have died if they had not found out about it in time,” he added.

AFib or atrial fibrillation is an abnormal heart rhythm. Recent Apple Watch models come with the ability to detect atrial fibrillation in humans and can therefore help users better understand and monitor their heart health.

Talking about heart rate tracking on Apple Watch, the Apple CEO said, “We just keep pulling the string to see where it takes us. One of the athletes here today told me that they use the sleep function a lot, and all of them use the heart rate function to see which heart rate zone they're operating at. And so, there's just an enormous amount of functionality in this little thing that you put on your wrist now. It's fantastic.”

Badminton star Saina Nehwal agreed the heart rate tracking functionality has been especially useful. “I started using the Apple Watch a few years back and kept upgrading as and when a new model got launched. Monitoring heart rate is a very crucial metric to know how well or not you have performed during a particular training session,” she told News18. “Earlier, we had to feel the pulse to make an estimate of heart rate but with the Apple Watch, we get accurate heart rate tracking always. It has been very helpful.”

Great meeting Coach Gopichand and badminton champions Saina Nehwal, Srikanth Kidambi, Chirag Shetty, and Parupalli Kashyap, who have played a part in putting badminton on the map for India. We served, smashed, and talked about how Apple Watch helps them train! pic.twitter.com/C9dghWK6XO

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 18, 2023

Parupalli Kashyap agreed the Apple device has been helpful in training. “The Apple Watch takes care of monitoring aspects of blood oxygen, ECG, heart rate and even sleep. This helps in getting an accurate idea of the level of fitness. We no longer have to use bulky machines for ECG or heart rate, this tiny Watch with its sensors does the job,” he said.

However, former badminton player and current coach of the Indian badminton team Pullela Gopichand offered a counter-take. “We have seen fine athletes who made it to the top in the past without having any device like the Apple Watch. Technology plays its part but it’s the individual’s hard work that matters. It feels good to see athletes adopting newer technologies to track minute fitness details, this just emphasises how competitive things have become,” he said.