Raising the Bar

Full Story

World champion Grant Hackett’s swimsuit, Asafa Powell’s running shoes and Sergey Bubka’s pole vault all have a part to play in their users’ success. Richard Brass offers a word of thanks to the unsung heroes of IP.

When Grant Hackett climbed out of the pool after putting a big hole in the world 1,500-metre swimming record at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, he generously acknowledged the help he had received. He thanked his Mum, his Dad, his brother, his friends back in Australia and his coach. But one hardworking industry that had made a key contribution to his success was left right out of the loop.

There’s no doubt that Hackett’s success was to a great degree a triumph of strength, willpower, training and emotional support. But it was also the result of years of technological development fiercely protected by a crack squad of IP professionals, not to mention the inventors who developed the products in the first place.

Hackett was part of a small group of elite swimmers in Athens wearing a Speedo Fastskin II swimsuit, a state-of-the-art piece of equipment that replicates the surface of a shark’s body to minimise drag as never before, giving a crucial edge in a sport where a hundredth of a second can go a very long way. The Fastskin I had a similar impact on the Sydney Olympics four years earlier, and four years before that in Atlanta, an astonishing 77% of swimming medal-winners were wearing Speedo’s Aquablade suits.

Their saviour will be nanotechnology, which is all about patents. It’s only slowly beginning to make its presence felt in sport, with tennis balls that keep their bounce for longer and bowling balls that never get scratched

Without continual technological innovation, no modern sporting records would have been possible, and some sports may not have survived if inventors had not kept raising the bar. How much interest would there be today in the pole vault, for example, if the original bamboo poles that hit their peak around 1896 with a vault of 3.2m were still standard? When Sergey Bubka set the current world record of 6.15m in 1994 using a carbon fibre pole, he proved the importance of invention in sport.

What chance would Asafa Powell have had of setting his 9.77-second 100m world record last June if, in the 1890s, a British businessman, JW Foster, hadn’t patented the idea of making running shoes with spikes on them, an idea taken to greater heights in the 1920s by the German inventor Adi Dassler?

How far would training have been set back if the Houston Astros hadn’t begun the 1966 baseball season on a new Chemgrass surface, known as Astroturf? How different would a modern tennis match be without the invention of Wilson’s T2000, the first metal racquet, in 1967 and the swift ensuing development of carbonfibre racquets, allowing for more powerful heads and serves like thunder? And, there has to be some doubt about how many would still be attracted to American football, or whether it would even still be legal, if in 1939 the John T Riddell Co of Chicago hadn’t patented a plastic helmet, spelling the end for the leather version which simply held the skull together until the strap was undone.

But those unsung inventors will have their day. Dramatic changes are on the way for sport technology that will make IP more important than ever.

Their saviour will be nanotechnology, which is all about patents. It’s only slowly beginning to make its presence felt in sport, with tennis balls that keep their bounce for longer and bowling balls that never get scratched, but the ability to create materials on a minute scale will change everything. Equipment will become spectacularly strong. Racing bikes and Formula 1 cars will become lighter than ever before. Even sports clothing will no longer smell, no matter how much sweat you throw at it. And that would be a result to make even the biggest star finally
give the inventors their due.

This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 12

For more articles by Richard Brass please click here

Go to lighter-side archive