A FREAK accident stalled the burgeoning archery career of the young Thai student just as he appeared to have successfully tested his own invention to help hone his skills for the Olympics.

For Roy Hotrabhvanon, he was just one step away from Rio 2016 when the car he was travelling in was in a head-on collision and, although everyone else escaped injury, a can of Coke was catapulted from the back of the car and hit him on the head.

On the journey to recovery he suffered memory loss and became physically out of shape so despite a valiant effort just failed to qualify for his Olympic dream.

However, the experience led Mr Hotrabhvanon to reconsider his own position which led to the setting up of a company with friend and fellow University of Edinburgh student Hayden Ball that is now to be showcased on a massive scale at the Homeless World Cup championships in Mexico later this year.

The Herald: Roy Hotrabhvanon

Mr Hotrabhvanon, 24, and his business partner Hayden, 23, went on to develop the first PlayerData product, wearable sports performance analysis technology, that they hope will become the "Goretex of sensors", being built into clothing at manufacture.

Even Mr Hotrabhvanon's entry to archery came with a twist.

When he arrived in Scotland in 2012 he was "very much your stereotypical computer scientist - I had never done a sport in my life before".

He declared: "I happened to find myself in the (university) sports fair of all places and decided to have a go at archery in a have-a-go session.

"I got absolutely hooked, fell in love with it and I picked it up as a hobby.

"I was doing it about a year, and I was okay at it, and I was enjoying it and basically there’s not much coaching available so I thought I would do something to help myself improve myself and that’s when I really started working on my sensor projects.

"From the start it was just little ways of trying to self-coach myself and improve myself and it turned into these sensors that I put on my body that would tell me simply which side of my body I would need to work on."

In 18 months this helped him improve to the extent he was able to represent Thailand at the Copenhagen 2015 World Championships.

He said: "I had Rio in my sights at that point because I was accelerating at such a pace."

On the way back from a round trip to Southampton for an archery contest and just yards from home, the car skidded.

"I was a front seat passenger and the car took a turn and there was oil on the road and it started to veer onto the other side of the road.

"We hit another car head-on.

"Everybody in both cars was fine but by luck a can of Coke came out of the boot and hit me on the back of the head.

"That resulted in five staples in the back of my head and I suffered severely from something called anterograde amnesia, which is inability to remember and form new memories.

"I got better over the course of a month and ended up still going to the qualifying event but because I couldn’t shoot during that time I had lost all the stamina and I missed out on the cut by the narrowest of margins. It was horrible."

It was during a break from archery he found inspiration again when he "realised that this story was almost too crazy to be true".

"So I took the technology of what I had developed at the time and picked a friend who went from having never picked up a bow before to capping for Scotland within seven months.

"It was at that point that Hayden and I said okay there is something here that we need to exploit."

The same year they set up PlayerData after the initial technology was developed at the University of Edinburgh’s Informatics School.

Mr Hotrabhvanon described how it works: "If I were to give you a sensors for running, you would put some leggings on that have sensors in-built and if you were to run two laps of a 100-metre track it will show the technique difference between the faster and slower one.

"That allows you and a coach to look at the data and identify where your foot is not hitting the floor consistently."

Mr Hotrabhvanon said: "We brought on some really high-profile and engaged investors that has helped us fund the R&D over this last year now, we completed our first sale about a month ago now and we partnered up with the Homeless World Cup where we are going in November, to capture data from all 400 games that are being played there and displayed live to the spectator, something that has never been done before."

Those to come on board included Mike Welch - who sold Blackcircles to Michelin for £50 million - and his investment advisory firm Full Circle Partners, and Sir Terry Leahy, former chief executive of Tesco supermarket.

In Mexico, sensors will be attached to the players and relay data wirelessly back to a base, which will then update the tournament site in real time.

The data will enable players to analyse their performance, and will also provide coaches with insight at the tournament organised by the Homeless World Cup Foundation social enterprise.

Fans will be able to log on to PlayerData to follow the distance run, speed, acceleration, attack versus defence percentage, pitch coverage and player movement.

Mr Hotrabhvanon said: "You’ve got how far each player has run, what kind of workload they are doing and other things that you don’t normally get from football stats.

"The whole point is that it is not curated stats that are tied into a broadcast, it is a website that you go to on your phone, your tablet or your computer that you can see all the stats live, you can scroll through the time-lines and view the live matches.

"We like to coin it as ‘data you can touch’."

In terms of the "grander plans going forward" PayerData will work with existing garment companies "who do the selling, the distribution, the marketing, and we are a technology company".

"We want to become the 'Goretex of sensors'."

Mr Hotrabhvanon, who has not ruled out competitive archery in future, was inspired in business by his parents in Thailand, who did not have a background in science and technology but who did inadvertently lead their son into computers.

"They run a jewellery business, so it is completely different.

"But when I was growing up, I would go and help with their IT problems and that’s how I got engaged with computers."

He also learned self-sufficiency from his parents.

"When we started and developed a concept for our first censors and decided to miniaturise it, we approached a third party consultancy, a hardware design agency and we asked them to do this for us.

"They said they needed £4,000 and it would take about two months."

He says: "We were poor students with an R&D budget of about £100 or £200 a month.

"We went on to Google and Googled how to design and build circuit boards."

They had what they needed in two weeks from a makeshift lab in Mr Hotrabhvanon's kitchen.

He said: "Most importantly, we took that knowledge and then had that knowledge and could do it again, so that is our way of operating."

Asked what the next step is for the young man who dreamed of being a rocket scientist as a child, he responds: "It’s hard to say, we’ve not really had a chance to have a break and look back, we’re not at that stage yet, we take it day by day.

"This journey was me and Hayden together, we are a team and we were there together from day one.

"Building a start-up is difficult, it is a lot of hard work but the way we see it is that because we are passionate about it, it is not really work for us.

"We don’t get tired of solving the problems.

"We are passionate about it and we see the light at the end of the tunnel."

But he says: "It is too early to sit down and look back, we are not at the stage where we can relax yet."

Six questions ...

What countries have you most enjoyed travelling to, for business or leisure, and why? Austria, especially Salzburg. There was something special in the combination of the architecture, culture, and food that struck me.

When you were a child, what was your ideal job? Why did it appeal? Rocket scientist. I spent my childhood watching too many documentaries about space. I started with water rockets, progressing to making homemade rocket propellant. Sadly, the school was not too happy with the burn marks left in the fields. So that didn't last very long.

What was your biggest break in business? Meeting our current investors and Mike (Welch) stepping in as chairman. The advice and guidance they offer are second to none.

What was your worst moment in business? Nothing stands out particularly as a single worst moment. There are periods where you work for months without seeing any visible change. But that is the nature of R&D, you work on lots of little things and the result only comes together at the end.

Who do you most admire and why? My parents. I spent my childhood watching them grow their business and helping out by playing 12-year-old tech support. I most admire their grit passion and work ethic and it is what has inspired me to create my own business. My parents did the design, the manufacture and the selling, so the entire process was in-house. I have taken those lessons and applied it to our own business. We do everything in-house, we don't outsource anything, otherwise you rely on third party suppliers and other people's timeline, and when you are in such a high-paced market it just doesn't cut it.

What book are you reading and what music are you listening to? What was the last film you saw? Chickenhawk, David Bowie, Ant-Man and The Wasp.