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Sports Technology?
An anonymous reader writes "With the 90th Tour de France starting today, it is fun to marvel at the improvement of road bike technology over the years. Like others, I have traded up from heavy steel to aluminum, and now carbon fiber, ending up with a bike far better than its rider. How have advances in sports technology enhanced your own performance and enjoyment of sport?"
Well, given that I've been racing bicycles for 15 years now, I think that the biggest advances have to be lightweight suspensions and disc brakes on mountain bikes, integrated shift/brake levers on road bikes, and scandium as a frame material.
:-)
Scandium's a pretty new development -- gives you the weight of aluminum with the durability and "liveliness" of steel...
Carbon fiber -- I've never liked, not even Trek's OCLV -- too much of a "dead" feel to the ride...
For my road bike, I too, am on aluminum, but I'm going back to steel this fall -- because, in the end, steel is real. I can get a bike similarly equipped to my aluminum one, at a similar weight (steel's got some great new alloys), with the feel and responsiveness I've always loved...
I could write forever on this subject, so I'll just shut up now.
blog |
the poster is correct. It is the 90th tour, but the Tour is also 100 years old. they missed 11 tours arround the first and the second world war.
Parabolic (shaped) skiis are a great example of technology in sports. It's not uber-high-tech, but it's made a world of difference. Ski lengths have plummetted, along with turning radii, and it's far easier for beginners to progress from snowplow to parallel and carved turns.
My other sig is funny!
There are a lot of ethical questions involved here. Improving materials in sports have lead to big improvements in some sports. Take polevaulting. If you plot the polevault world record versus year for the 20th century, you will see significant jumps as the athletes switched from hardwood to bamboo to fiberglass to carbon fiber. Concequently, you can't compare records from different eras.
Golf in another sport where this has become a problem. The advances in golf clubs have made it difficult for the courses to keep up. The USGA has finally had to set limits on the properties of golf clubs for official play because the alternative (making the courses longer) is very difficult and expensive.
College baseball is another one. They have had to slap limits on the properties of aluminum baseball bats because they were starting to affect the game too much. There are now rules governing how much rebound is allowed from a bat. Note that major league baseball doesn't have this problem because they still use wooden bats.
I am a materials scientist, and I'm always amazed how every new material immediately gets made into golf clubs. Titanium, Beryllium-Copper, Cermets, Amorphous metals. Each has been made into golf clubs.
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The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Training aids, such as video, have been mentioned and can be invaluable. Certainly not common in my parent's athletic careers. More recent developments, such as tools to measure efficiency are helping us to figure out how, exactly, we do swim. Hard to believe, but it's something we simply don't yet know. In addition to training aids, scholarship and the parent's note of nutrition, recovery & kinesiology there's also been developments in pool construction. Water chemistry, temperature, lane rope & gutter design, floor & wall shapes, starting block design - there's a lot that goes into a world class pool. It could be argued that, with the pool, swimmers may have the largest equipment of all ;).
In the end, though, well the technical developments are significant, the sport still comes down to getting to the wall first. I think I'd find it difficult to be, say, a cyclist or to spend much of my life with a javelin knowing that owning the right equipment is half the battle...
Some gratuitous linkage
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
Once upon a time, Scot Nicol of Ibis Cycles wrote "Metallurgy for Cyclists," an article about different frame materials for bicycles. Out of date by now, but still an informative.
(Google search result used because none of the servers it's on looks able to sustain much traffic.)
I'm not sure what the "Hawkeye" system is really, so I can't totally respond.
The Shot Spot works in the same way (kinda) as the technology that puts the yellow markets on the screen for first downs in foot ball.
There are 4 cameras that are positioned in different locations to see the entire court.
So long as 3 of the 4 cameras can see the ball at any one moment, it is possible to triangulate the exact position of the tennis ball in 3D.
ESPN (a sports network in the US, just incase you don't get it), uses it to replay the bounce of a ball, using a CG version of the ball to show if it was in or out. Aside from that, every now and then the commentators will say "As you can see, the second serve of Roddick starts off at the same point, but it lands shorter in the box and kicks up much higher", and as they are talking you are seeing a 3D, CG video of 2 balls moving from the service location, into the return box, bouncing etc, and the camera can pan around and move and stuff.
It's really very neat!
The Umpire of course can not use this information to overrule calls.
Everyone here seems to be talking about the able bodied sports.
I am involved with prosthetics and orthotics, and technology plays a huge part in the paralympics.
Look at carbon fibre legs. The fastest paralympian is Marlon Shirley who can do the 100m in 11.09 seconds.
But this tech is also used in able bodied athletes. Take for example that carbon fibre plates are used inside runners shoes to act as energy storage devices and allow the runner to be more efficient than his body would be without the shoes.
I'm too young to have seen the development of the most revolutionary advances in climbing: the shoes, ropes, harnesses, belay devices, protection, etc. etc. But I sure do appreciate their benefits -- both in my ability to climb more difficult routes and (more importantly) the safety with which I can climb.
As an example of the benefits of new technology, consider the American climbing ratings system (the Yosemite Decimal System). Originally there were ten difficulty levels, from 5.1 to 5.10, 5.10 being "physically impossible". Today, it goes to 5.15 -- and thanks to the technical advances in gear, an amateur like myself can climb 5.10 or 5.11 (once considered "advanced" climbs).
-Thomas
Virtual Spectator (http://www.virtualspectator.com/) I'd say is the biggest jump in sports viewing technogly. Made by some Kiwi's down in Dunedin.
It has made wacthing Yacthing interested and has come a long way since American's Cup 1995.
Along with yacthing they have also doing golf, WRC and F1.
http://blog.karit.geek.nz/
My wife and I are serious bicyclists. This year, we are attempting longer and harder rides than ever before, with more elevation gain. So we got new bikes.
My wife's bike is built on a frame by Wylder, called the Queen of the Road. Wylder is going out of business; when they were in business, they charged $1800 for that frame, but they are selling the frames they have left for $750. (Their web site says they have 42 cm, 45 cm, 52 cm, and 55 cm frames left. If you know a woman who wants a ti bike and can fit one of those sizes, send her this link!)
My bike -- I'm still amazed, I feel so lucky -- is a Colnago Ovalmaster. It's 6/4 titanium, the extra-stiff kind, and it has oddly shaped tubes; the shaped tubes help make the bike very stiff in the ways I want it to be stiff (when I hammer on the pedals, the frame doesn't flex) but still light and springy when I go over bumps. I love it.
I was able to afford my frame because I got it used on ebay. You can get some great deals on bike stuff on ebay.
Anyway, our new bikes have really helped us improve our speed. I didn't realize how much my wife's old bike was holding her back, until she got the new one. Her old bike is comfortable and stable, but it's six full pounds heavier than her new one, which matters when you are spending many hours climbing tall hills. And a lot of the weight savings is in moving parts: pedals, cranks, wheels. (The rule of thumb is that rotating weight counts double, so you should sooner get a lighter wheel than a lighter saddle.)
For me, the biggest improvement with the new bike is not the climbing, but the descending! My old bike was not stiff enough for me, and I got very nervous going down a steep hill. My new bike feels rock-stable under me when I am descending. I am still not a speed demon on downhills, but I'm a lot happier and a bit faster.
The metric I like to apply to bikes is dollars per mile. We ride enough miles that even just this year, both bikes will drop to well under a dollar per mile. If you only ride 10 miles at a time, don't spend serious money on a bike; get an inexpensive starter bike. (But don't buy a $200 bike from Wal-Mart. If you are considering buying a new bike, please read my thoughts on my personal web page about bikes.)
When you think about it, there is a lot of technology going with us on bike rides. We have heart rate monitors that also record speed, distance, and altitude changes (Polar S720+). We have technical fabric clothing, such as CoolMax jerseys or microfiber polyester rainwear. We have helmets that can save us in a bad accident, yet are light and don't make our heads overheat. We carry cell phones while riding, in case a bike totally breaks down and we need a taxi, or in case someone needs medical help.
No matter how much technology I buy, the pro riders could still ride me into the ground on a low-end bike. But our titanium bikes, and our other gear, let us ride up to our ability and have fun doing it.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
On the tennis comment... Someone, at some point, started the "With these new racquets, the game is all power hitters, everyone is hitting aces, the game is boring" There is no basis in fact to back up these claims, it is total nonsense. The racquets today, don't really help the serve that much, the DO help the returner a lot. 30 years ago, the Wilson speed serving contest was won with a wood racquet, and the serve was hit at over 150mph, thats faster than the current ATP Tour record of 149mph (although the ATP Record requires that the serve go in, while the other contest didn't). Sampras played McEnroe in a charity tennis event, where they both played with wood racquets. Sampras was still serving mid to upper 120's just like he does with his regular ProStaff 6.0. For those that say "The game is totally dominated by the big servers!!!!" Of course that is TOTALLY FALSE! Wimbledon is the fastest surface of any tennis court, so of course the servers are going to have the greatest advantage at wimbledon compared with any other tournament. So, was the draw dominated by big servers?? NO, it wasn't at all!! The mens quaterfinals saw Jonas Bjorkman, Andy Roddick, Roger Federer, Sjeng Schalken, Tim Henman, Sebastien Grosjean, Alexander Popp, and Mark Philippoussis. Only Roddick, Popp, and Phillippoussis could be considered big servers in that group. 3/8 isn't really the domination you would expect. Of the top 10 men in championship race for this year, only 1 could be called a big server, and thats Roddick, who is 7th. Come on.
Dude, it is a recumbent. I'm guessing you ride one, so you'll have 1001 reasons for riding it, but they all boil down to the fact you wasted your money on one.
There are some of us that actually enjoy riding a bike, which means not just riding on the flat (which is about all a recumbent can do), but going up hills, down them (a very scary proposition on a 'bent) and across rough terrain (either off-road, or just city streets!). 'Bents have some nice properties, but regular style bicycles just work better across more situations.
Get over it.
- titanium 1.44 kg
- carbon 1.52 kg
- aluminium 1.47 kg
- 531 steel 1.95 kg
Is saving 1 pound going to make much or any difference? Get your hair cut and save as much, and improve your streamling as well.My 531 steel frame touring bike, after 21 years' service, may be retired, due to a crossed bottom bracket thread that would cost more than a new bike to fix. Meanwhile I'm riding a recent mountain bike, but pine for my old one. The spring shocks are just complications unnecessary for a road bike, but it's hard to get one without them now. Likewise going from clusters of 5 to 6 was nice, but now it's at 8 or 9, which is just pointless, and needs a narrower chain that wears out faster.
For Slashdotters, it may be worth noting that Shimano has been called the Microsoft of bicycles, due to it having wiped out a lot of competition in bike components through OEM agreements, and first following standards as it moves into a new segment (thread sizes, etc) then once it dominates, changing them on an annual basis in cosmetically pretty but functionally indifferent ways that make finding spare parts almost impossible and forcing replacements when all you need is a little cog wheel.