You could say that July 1, 2019 just wasn’t Sarah True’s day. Though the two-time Olympian had been holding her lead in the Ironman European Championships in Frankfurt, the ferocious heat got the better of her in the final mile. Instead of crossing the finish line to take top spot on the podium, the two-time Olympian collapsed from heatstroke and was carried off the course.
It’s a heartbreaking end for any athlete, but while watching the event, Wulf Glatz had an idea – maybe, with the right tools, it could have been True's day. A mechanical engineer by education, Glatz was familiar with a tiny chip called the heat flux sensor which measures energy transfer. It had previously been used to calibrate lasers, and there had been a failed attempt to use it to charge a battery using human body heat, but had failed in that endeavor. It dawned on Glatz while he was watching the Frankfurt coverage that the heat flux sensor could be used to prevent what happened to True from happening to other athletes.
