The French agency also taught individual sports federations to perform systematic debriefings of trainers and coaches upon returning from international competitions. Canu saw all of this as an evolution of more traditional training — run, jump, lift, rest — something all the elite countries practiced in some form, only under different names. Some called it innovation. Others called it research and development. The French labeled their efforts as surveillance, or intelligence. Canu has been quoted saying, “Sports espionage is the reality these days.”

Before Vancouver, British Columbia, hosted the Winter Olympics in 2010, Canada created an arm for research and innovation known as Top Secret, and everyone involved signed nondisclosure agreements, engineers included, lest their intelligence end up in the hands of the competition. The wildly successful British track-cycling program labeled its program the Secret Squirrel Club, and it produced a superbike made from components used in Formula One racing and the aerospace industry.

Canada created its Top Secret initiative as part of a larger program, Own the Podium, in 2005. A sizable increase in financing, much of it from corporate sponsors keen on ballooning the host’s medal count, provided Top Secret with more than $2 million each year for five years leading into the Olympics. That went to 55 projects, and included about 18 institutes and 3 think tanks.

Dr. Jon Kolb, a director of sports science, medicine and innovation, Canada’s answer to Canu, led the program. He said he could not quantify how many medals Top Secret ultimately produced. Its financing is now lower, its name changed, but Kolb and his colleagues are already pointed toward the Olympics in 2014 and 2016.

“London is way in my rearview mirror,” he said while at an airport, on his way to a research summit in Europe. “We’ve already got projects for Rio in the works. I can’t tell you what they are, of course.”

As the London Games approached, the United States BMX team performed its reconnaissance at a test event in London — without consent of the hosts. According to the national team coach James Herrera: “We had guys on the ground, taking video, 3D-, engineering-type images. So we knew how many feet it was going to be from the base of the ramp to the first obstacle, how high, how far.”

But Olympic officials changed the course in January. The United States team flew the same builder back to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., and altered its replica course accordingly. Officials declined to provide details but did speak to the advantages such a course provided. “Massive” is how Herrera described it, noting how the American team built a replica track for Beijing, too, from drawings mostly, and won half of the six BMX medals.