The Cambridge Science Festival returns this year from 12th to 25th March, with a focus on sport to coincide with the upcoming Olympics.

The theme ‘breaking boundaries’ refers to the relentless progress of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

A programme of over 180 events, the majority of which are free, has been tailored to suit children and adults of all ages.

This year, Festival has teamed up with the Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP), an award-winning education initiative based at the University of Cambridge, in a bid to rouse interest in the often-overlooked link between mathematics and sport.

The MMP promotes mathematical skill and understanding from Key Stage levels 1 to 5, as part of the London 2012 Education Programme.

Questions to be posited at the Festival include: Could Usain Bolt better his world-record sprint time without running any faster? Is the host nation at an advantage when it comes to winning those much-coveted medallions?

First off the starting blocks at the Science Festival will Cambridge’s John Barrow, Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences. He will cast a ‘mathematical eye’ over sports to delve in to the mechanics of what is really going on as we watch Team GB go for gold in August.

Professor Barrow, whose new book, ‘100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Sport’ comes out this month, told Varsity: “There are many examples where mathematical understanding can show athletes how to optimise their performances or teach us how to design better events.”

It can help to answer such questions as: “In an event with different disciplines, like the triathlon, what is the best distance to use for the swim, ride and run to create an event that respects each discipline?”

In the Festival, Professor Barrow will explore how Bolt, with “his very poor reaction times to the starting gun, typically the slowest of Olympic and World championship Finalists,” could be quickened through simple changes in wind and altitude.

Whilst Olympians and scientists might not be the most obvious allies, the Science Festival and the MMP aim to alter this perception in the run up to the London Games this August.