As the British (and other teams) have demonstrated: Numbers don't lie. And if we record and properly analyze the right numbers, we can see more than what a stopwatch can show us.
I believe that this is how they groom their young talent so quickly. They bypass years of trial and error and years of the athlete learning how to communicate what the body is doing to his/her coach.
The Brits actually hired a guy whose job was to analyze data files from the athletes. He later married Victoria Pendleton...lucky dog.