49 Fun Facts About Sports Technology

Hawk-Eye, familiar from tennis line calls, was first used on TV in 2001 to analyse what?

LBW decisions in cricket. It projected whether a ball that struck the batter's pad would have gone on to hit the wicket, a judgement that had rested largely on guesswork.

Hawk-Eye plots a ball's flight using several what, mounted around the stadium roof?

High-speed cameras. Each films the ball from a different angle, and software triangulates the views into a 3D path, then predicts where the ball was heading.

Which Grand Slam was the first to let players challenge line calls using Hawk-Eye, in 2006?

US Open. A run of bad calls against Serena Williams in her 2004 quarter-final there, exposed by TV replays, pushed tennis to hand players electronic challenges two years later.

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

Sony bought the British firm in March 2011. The Hawk-Eye name is a play on its inventor, Paul Hawkins, who said the sale created "immense opportunities for the sports industry".

Which football chief, until then opposed to goal-line technology, reopened the debate after a missed goal at the 2010 World Cup?

Sepp Blatter apologised for the missed goal and reopened the goal-line debate, but said other errors needed no technology; by 2014 he was proposing that managers be allowed video challenges.

In a 2016 Dutch cup tie, a video referee turned a Willem II player's yellow card red against which club?

Ajax. Anouar Kali was booked for kicking Lasse Schöne's ankle, and seconds later the video assistant had the card changed to red, the first dismissal of its kind in the Netherlands.

The first World Cup to use video assistant referees was held in which country?

Russia. Video review helped push the 2018 tournament to a record 29 penalties, eleven more than any World Cup before it.

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

Drawing a rectangle in the air stands for a TV screen. Players who mimic the gesture too insistently to demand a review can themselves be shown a yellow card.

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

Frank Lampard's shot hit the bar and bounced well over the line, yet play went on and England lost 4-1. Two days later FIFA's president apologised to England for the error.

Which league's clubs voted in April 2013 to adopt goal-line technology for the following season?

Premier League. The following January an Edin Džeko strike for Manchester City against Cardiff became the first goal in the league to be awarded on the technology's say-so.

When goal-line technology detects a goal, where is the alert sent within one second?

The referee's watch. It vibrates and lights up, and FIFA's test rules say the signal must reach the match officials alone, so the referee still makes the call.

At the 2014 World Cup, which team scored the first World Cup goal awarded by goal-line technology, against Honduras?

France. Karim Benzema's shot hit the post, then crossed the line off goalkeeper Noel Valladares; the stadium screen first flashed 'No Goal' for the post, baffling the crowd before the goal was confirmed.

In cricket's DRS, what is a ball-tracking verdict too close to overturn called?

Umpire's call. It applies when ball-tracking is too close to be sure, so the original verdict stands either way, and since late 2017 a side that draws one keeps its review.

How does a cricketer request a DRS review?

Making a 'T' with the arms. The sign dates from the system's first trial, in a 2008 Test series in Sri Lanka, where an overruled official had to revoke his first signal before giving the new one.

Which T20 league held out against the Decision Review System until 2018?

Indian Premier League. India's board spent years insisting the system was not foolproof, so a rival got there first: the Pakistan Super League used DRS in its 2017 play-offs.

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

Infrared. Two cameras at either end of the ground pick up the friction heat where ball meets bat or pad, using technology first built to track tanks and fighter jets.

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

A sound waveform from a stump microphone. A sharp spike just as the ball passes the bat means an edge, the faint 'snick' that names the gadget; a duller wave means pad or ground.

Which UK broadcaster unveiled the Snickometer when it took over Test cricket coverage in 1999?

Channel 4 unveiled the Snickometer at the launch of its Test coverage in June 1999, which ended decades of live cricket on BBC television; computer scientist Allan Plaskett had invented it in the mid-1990s.

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

Pressure sensors under the court. Thin switches beneath the lines told a ball from a shoe by timing: a bounce lasts a few milliseconds and a footstep far longer, so feet on the line were ignored.

Cyclops, the beeping machine Wimbledon adopted in 1980, ruled on which shot?

The serve. Beams of light skimmed 10 mm above the court just beyond the service line, so a long serve broke one and set off the beep, while the line judge still ruled on the obviously long ones.

Which cockpit safety device, mandatory in Formula 1 since 2018, did Romain Grosjean credit with saving his life in 2020?

The halo. The titanium hoop kept a steel barrier off his head when his car split in two and caught fire; Grosjean, once a sceptic, called it the greatest thing brought to Formula 1.

Which organisation's wind tunnels did Speedo use to test fabrics for its record-breaking LZR Racer swimsuit?

NASA. A Langley wind tunnel ranked the drag of candidate fabrics; Speedo's team said people told them 'this isn't rocket science', and they began to think that maybe it was.

Since swimming's 2010 ban on full-body suits like the LZR Racer, what is the lowest a pool racing suit may reach?

The knee. From 2010 men's suits could run only from waist to knee and women's from shoulder to knee, in permeable textile that cannot trap air and lift the swimmer.

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

Michael Phelps wore the suit to a record eight gold medals in Beijing, where, by Speedo's count, 98% of the swimming medals went to swimmers in LZR Racers.

Which 1954 rule change lifted NBA scoring by nearly 14 points a game?

Shot clock. Teams had been sitting on leads by passing endlessly; given 24 seconds to shoot, scoring jumped at once, and the Syracuse Nationals, whose owner pushed the rule, won that season's title.

After Darryl Dawkins shattered two backboards with dunks in 1979, which piece of equipment did the NBA adopt league-wide?

Breakaway rims. The spring-loaded hoop came from Arthur Ehrat, an Illinois grain-elevator manager who used a John Deere spring and said he knew 'practically nothing about the damn game'.

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

A hinge at the front. The heel lifts free, so the blade stays flat on the ice through a longer push; after Tonny de Jong won the 1997 European title on clap skates, the rest of the sport switched.

Clap skates were developed at a university in which Dutch city?

Amsterdam. Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau built his first prototype there in 1980 but could not patent it, because the same idea turned out to have been patented back in 1894.

Statcast's exit velocity measures a baseball's speed where?

Off the bat. Statcast, in every ballpark since 2015, made the reading so central that Tampa Bay Rays hitters were reportedly told it mattered more than their batting average.

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

TrackMan. Its Doppler radar follows the whole pitch and reports the speed just out of the hand, where the ball is fastest, not 55 feet from the plate, so readings rose a little in 2017.

What does a pitch clock violation cost an MLB pitcher?

A ball is added to the count. A batter who isn't ready in time is charged a strike instead, and within a month of the rule's arrival in 2023 the average game was almost half an hour shorter.

TV's yellow first-down line appears to pass under the players thanks to an adapted form of which film-effects technique?

Green screen. As on a TV weather map, computers paint the line only onto grass-coloured pixels, so players' uniforms block it out; ESPN first aired it in a 1998 Bengals-Ravens game.

The engineers behind football's virtual first-down line had earlier built which 1996 broadcast gimmick?

The FoxTrax puck. Fox's glowing hockey puck was dropped in 1998, but its engineers, led by Stan Honey, had filed a first-down patent within months of the puck's debut and founded Sportvision to build it.

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

The Army-Navy Game. Only one replay worked that day, a short touchdown run by Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh, and by Verna's account the tape had earlier held episodes of I Love Lucy.

In a photo finish, which part of a sprinter's body must reach the line first?

Torso. Head, arms and feet don't count, which is why sprinters dip at the line: a torso dip won Noah Lyles the 2024 Olympic 100 m final by five-thousandths of a second.

Since the 1968 Games, what has stopped each swimmer's clock in an Olympic pool?

A touchpad on the wall. Swimming went electronic after 1960, when judges gave a sprint gold to John Devitt although the backup timer and all three stopwatches had Lance Larson ahead.

Which Swiss watchmaker sent a single technician with 30 stopwatches to time the entire 1932 Los Angeles Olympics?

Omega. Its chronographs read to a tenth of a second; by 1948 its 'Magic Eye' photoelectric cell was working with a British photo-finish camera, which settled that year's Olympic 100 metres final for Harrison Dillard.

What did World Cup referees first use in 2014 to mark where the defensive wall must stand at a free kick?

Vanishing spray. The foam line fades within a minute; a Brazilian, Heine Allemagne, devised it in 2000 after thinking of shaving foam while watching a match on TV.

How did sprinters get grip before starting blocks?

Dug holes in the track. Blocks, credited to Australian Charlie Booth in 1929, were at first banned as a mechanical aid, and George Simpson's 9.4-second 100 yards was refused as a record for using them.

What material is the stiff plate inside marathon 'super shoes' such as Nike's Vaporfly made from?

Carbon fibre. The plate sits in thick foam and springs runners forward; Eliud Kipchoge wore a prototype for the first sub-two-hour marathon, and in 2020 the sport capped shoes at one plate each.

Which company made the 'Tartan' all-weather track on which the 1968 Mexico City Olympics were run?

3M. The surface was developed for horse racing as well as athletics: chairman William McKnight kept racehorses, and a Pennsylvania harness track was racing on it five years before the Mexico City Games.

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

Deep foam matting. Sand and sawdust pits forced jumpers to land on their feet; raised foam let Dick Fosbury come down on his back, the style that won him Olympic gold in 1968.

Which flexible material replaced steel and aluminium vaulting poles from the late 1950s?

Fiberglass. Unlike metal, the pole bends and springs back to fling the vaulter upward; John Uelses used one to become the first man over 16 feet in February 1962.

Which sprinter did starting-block sensors catch false-starting in the 2011 World Championships 100 m final?

Usain Bolt. A single false start means disqualification, so the world record holder was out at once; the sensors treat any reaction quicker than a tenth of a second as jumping the gun.

Which fencing weapon was the first to be scored electrically, in the 1930s?

Epee. Lights and a buzzer replaced its side judges in the 1930s; foil did not follow until the 1950s, and sabre, which also scores with the edge of the blade, waited until around 1990.

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

A lamé. Metal threads woven through the jacket complete a circuit when the opponent's blade lands, and it covers only the valid target, so a foil lamé is sleeveless while a sabre one has arms.

Which World Cup ball, built from just eight panels, did an England goalkeeper call 'dreadful' in 2010?

Jabulani. It had eight moulded panels, down from 14 in 2006; David James added that it was 'horrible for everyone', and goalkeepers from Italy, Brazil and Spain complained about it too.

Which athletes' aid won worldwide notice when Kerri Walsh wore it at the 2008 Olympics?

Kinesio tape. Chiropractor Kenzo Kase had developed it in the 1970s; Walsh had no endorsement deal, as the maker had simply donated rolls of it to Olympic teams.

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

TMO stands for television match official. Usually sitting in a truck outside the ground, the official may speak up only about tries and suspected foul play, talking to the referee through an earpiece.