It is common for sport science practitioners, including sport biomechanists, to interact with high-performance coaches in the daily training environment. These relationships are beneficial for both scientist and coach, as well as the athletes. However, as indicated by difficulties in transferring new research into coaching practice, these relationships are not functioning as well as they could. The aim of this paper is to examine the various factors that influence the coach–biomechanist relationship in the elite sprinting context and gain an understanding of what impedes and enhances this, which will ultimately maximise an athlete's performance. Sprint coaches ( n = 56) and applied sport biomechanists ( n = 12) were surveyed to determine the participants' experiences working with each other and use of biomechanics in the training environment. Semi-structured interviews with coaches ( n = 8) and biomechanists ( n = 8) were conducted to further explore these ideas. From the biomechanists perspective, the relationship appeared to be less effective than from the coaches' perspective and both groups identified areas for improvement. The coaches had an inconsistent understanding of biomechanics theory and the support a biomechanist could provide in the training environment, while it was acknowledged that biomechanists needed to improve their communication skills. Coach and practitioner education were identified as where these improvements could be facilitated. There are many aspects of the coach–biomechanist relationship that could contribute to establishing optimal practice in the high-performance environment and enhance the transfer of knowledge from scientist to coach. This paper proposes a number of directions that could be taken.

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It is common for applied sport biomechanists and high-performance coaches to work closely together. A feature of this relationship is that both bring unique experiences and knowledge to the common goal of improving an athlete's performance. For sprint running, coaches and biomechanists place importance on different aspects of technique. The purpose of this paper was to determine if these differences in experiential knowledge impact coaches and biomechanists visual perception of sprinting technique. Sport biomechanists ( n = 12) and, expert ( n = 11) and developing ( n = 11) coaches watched video of athletes sprinting at two different speeds while wearing eye tracking glasses and, retrospectively, reported on the technique features observed. Mixed methods ANOVAs were used to determine visual search strategies and efficiency and used to indicate the relationship between visual search and verbal commentary data. The speed of video playback was the main determinant of visual search behavior, significantly impacting the visual search rate and relative fixation duration at a number of areas of interest. The use of a visual pivot indicated all participants' visual search strategies were efficiency driven. Overall, the verbal commentary did not completely align with the eye tracking data and there were varying degrees of agreement with the identified technique related areas of interest for coaches and biomechanists. However, differences in visual search strategy and verbal commentary suggest that experiential knowledge impacts participants' observation and perception of sprinting technique.