50 Fun Facts About Sports Technology

Hawk-Eye, used in more than 20 sports, was first implemented in 2001 to analyse what?

Paul Hawkins developed it in the United Kingdom for television broadcasts. It has since spread to tennis, football, baseball and more.

Hawk-Eye is advertised as accurate to within how many millimetres?

Up to ten high-speed cameras, usually mounted under the stadium roof, triangulate the ball's path into a 3D trajectory.

Which Grand Slam first made official use of Hawk-Eye, with two challenges per set?

Controversial calls against Serena Williams in her 2004 US Open quarter-final had pushed the sport toward electronic line calling.

Which electronics company bought the Hawk-Eye system in 2011?

In 2006 a Wisden-led investor group had bought the company for 4.4 million pounds to strengthen its position in cricket and tennis.

When did IFAB formally write the video assistant referee into the Laws of the Game?

The system operates under the philosophy of minimal interference, maximum benefit, targeting clear and obvious errors and serious missed incidents.

The first official match to use VAR, in September 2016, was a cup tie in which country?

Ajax played Willem II in the KNVB Cup. A yellow card was upgraded to red, the first VAR-based expulsion in a professional game.

At which tournament did VAR make its debut on the global stage?

Much of the video technology behind VAR is supplied and patented by Hawk-Eye Innovations under licence from FIFA.

How does a football referee signal an on-field VAR review?

The review happens at a referee review area beside the pitch, in public view. Slow motion is used only to establish point of contact.

Whose disallowed goal against Germany in 2010 reopened the goal-line technology debate?

The shot hit the crossbar, bounced well over the line and came back out. FIFA president Sepp Blatter had opposed the technology until then.

In which month and year did IFAB officially approve goal-line technology?

The Laws were amended to permit but not require it. Because of the cost, it is used only at the top levels of the game.

GoalRef and the Cairos system detected goals using what hidden inside the ball?

Hawk-Eye took the opposite, camera-based approach and now powers 135 of the 144 stadiums with licensed installations.

Goal-line technology has been used at men's and women's FIFA World Cups since what year?

GoalRef was first used by a match referee at the 2012 FIFA Club World Cup, on 6 December 2012.

Cricket's formal Decision Review System was first used in a Test match in which year?

Umpires had been able to refer some decisions to a third umpire since November 1992, but player reviews were the new element.

Cricket's Player Referral system was first tested in a match between India and which team?

The concept had been proposed in 1997 by Sri Lankan-born lawyer Senaka Weeraratna in a letter published in several newspapers.

The 2017 edition of which T20 competition was the first to use DRS in its knockout stages?

The first T20 tournament to use the system outright was the 2018 ICC Women's World Twenty20, with one review per team.

Cricket's Hot Spot system uses which kind of camera to show where the ball struck?

Two cameras on opposite sides of the ground pick up the friction heat of contact, which shows as a bright spot on bat or pad.

The Snickometer, or Snicko, pairs slow-motion replay with what?

A sharp spike in sync with the ball passing the bat indicates an edge. It is used alongside Hot Spot in DRS reviews.

Which UK broadcaster brought Snicko, Hawk-Eye and the Red Zone to cricket coverage in 1999?

Snicko was invented by English computer scientist Allan Plaskett in the mid-1990s. The newer Real-Time Snickometer needs no manual syncing.

The first computerised tennis line judge, shown in 1974, detected the ball using what?

Invented by Geoffrey Grant and Robert Nicks, it used thin mylar sensors under a carpet court and could tell a ball bounce from a foot.

Tennis's Cyclops service-line system projected light beams how far above the court?

It was introduced at Wimbledon in 1980 and the US Open in 1981, and was eventually superseded by Hawk-Eye in the mid-2000s.

Cyclops was co-invented by Bill Carlton and Margaret Parnis England, who came from where?

A long serve broke one of the outer beams and triggered an audible signal, while the umpire still called obviously long serves.

Speedo's LZR Racer suit cut skin friction drag by what percentage over its predecessor?

NASA wind tunnel facilities supported the design, and the suit's look was done with the fashion brand Comme des Garcons.

From which date were the LZR Racer and similar full-body suits ineligible for competition?

FINA voted in July 2009 to require woven textile suits and limit their length. Multiple world records fell within a week of the LZR's release.

Which swimmer spearheaded Speedo's LZR Racer campaign for the Beijing Olympics?

A holographic video of him in the suit was shown in London, Sydney, New York and Tokyo on the day of its release.

The NBA introduced the shot clock in which year to stop stalling tactics?

The owner of one struggling franchise divided 2,880 seconds of game time by 120 shots to arrive at 24 seconds per possession.

Danny Biasone, the shot clock pioneer, owned which NBA franchise?

The team, now the Philadelphia 76ers, won the NBA title in the first season played with the 24-second clock.

Clap skates attach the blade to the boot by what mechanism?

The blade stays on the ice longer as the ankle extends. The Dutch women's team adopted them in 1996-97 and records tumbled, including at Nagano 1998.

Clap skates were developed at a university in which city?

Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau led the work at the Vrije Universiteit, though a hinged skate had been patented back in 1894 by Karl Hannes.

MLB's Statcast tracking system was installed in all 30 ballparks from which season?

It blends doppler radar with high-definition video. Rays hitters were told they would be judged on exit velocity, not batting average.

Which Statcast component replaced PITCHf/x for official pitch speeds in 2017?

Speeds are now taken at release rather than 55 feet from home plate, so some pitches registered slightly faster than under the old system.

Major League Baseball began using a pitch clock in which season?

A 20-second clock built by Timex had been installed at Lawrence Stadium in Wichita as early as 1962 for the National Baseball Congress tournament.

The virtual yellow first-down line first aired in 1998 during a game between which teams?

Sportvision aired it on ESPN on 27 September 1998. PVI followed weeks later with its own version on CBS on Thanksgiving Day.

Which glowing gimmick at the 1996 NHL All-Star Game inspired the virtual first-down line?

A PVI executive saw the puck and realised combining it with his company's video insertion system could place graphics anywhere on a field.

Tony Verna invented instant replay for CBS's 1963 broadcast of which contest?

The machine weighed 1,200 pounds and only one replay aired, prompting Lindsey Nelson to tell viewers that Army did not score again.

The first near-instant replay system was developed and used in which country?

The first true instant replay was then developed and deployed in the United States. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan cited it as a landmark.

Photo-finish cameras typically use which photographic technique?

The camera records only the finish line, so the horizontal axis of the image represents time rather than space.

Photo-finish cameras were developed in the 1940s and 1950s largely to clean up which sport?

Betting on races boomed mid-century, and authorities wanted to improve the probity of a sport widely seen as corrupt.

Which Olympics first reported official results to the nearest hundredth of a second?

Omega, official timer since 1932, lost the role to Longines in 1972 and returned four years later.

The first Olympic time recorded by an automatic timing device came in which 1928 event?

Toivo Loukola won in 9:21.60 by the Lobner camera-timer. Under IAAF rules, sprint records must now be timed by a fully automatic system.

Charlie Booth and his father, credited with inventing starting blocks in 1929, were from where?

Before blocks, sprinters dug holes in the cinder track with trowels. George Simpson's 9.4-second 100 yards in 1930 was disallowed for using blocks.

The 1968 Mexico City Games were the first Olympics to use which running surface?

The 3M product was the first man-made athletics surface, and its name became a generic term for any all-weather track.

Which company manufactured the original polyurethane all-weather track used at Mexico City 1968?

First produced in 1967, it was later reformulated to remove mercury. Olympic shot put champion Bill Nieder helped develop and sell it.

What landing-area innovation let high jumpers adopt the backwards Fosbury flop safely?

Earlier jumpers landed in sand or on low mats and had to come down on their feet. Dick Fosbury won gold with the technique in 1968.

Bamboo pole vault poles were introduced in which year?

Ash and hickory came first, aluminium and steel arrived after 1945, and fiberglass poles made headlines when John Uelses set a record in 1962.

Who won the 1952 Olympic decathlon using a fiberglass vaulting pole?

Herb Jenks had been making fiberglass poles since 1948, well before the material grabbed press attention in the early 1960s.

Which fencing weapon was the first to get electrical scoring, in 1933?

The Laurent-Pagan apparatus replaced side judges with lights and a tone. Foil followed in 1956 and sabre not until 1988.

In foil and sabre fencing, what conductive garment lets the scoring box register hits?

Fencers of the heavier thrusting weapon do not need one, because the entire body is a valid target. A body cord runs through the sleeve to the scoring box.

The Adidas Jabulani, the 2010 World Cup ball, was built from how many panels?

That was down from 14 in 2006. NASA's Ames Research Center found the ball had a noticeable knuckleball effect in flight.

Kinesio tape was developed in the 1970s by Kenzo Kase, a Japanese-American what?

His company still takes legal action to stop Kinesio becoming a generic term for the brightly coloured elastic tape seen on athletes.

In rugby union, the video official who assists the referee is known by what initials?

A television match official can only rule on what the referee asks, but may flag foul play through the referee's earpiece.