By Joel Cheong
Fans of the German and South Korean national football teams will forever remember #KORGER as the event where a tournament-level squad that never failed to qualify past the group stage in every FIFA World Cup since 1938 was bested by a team who probably decided that if they can’t qualify past group stage, might as well go out with a bang.
Germany had already lost to Mexico and needed to perform in this match or risk elimination. Fans were already gnawing at their eagle scarves as various attempts at a goal were denied by goalkeeper Jo Hyeon-woo with his perfect smile. Just when it appeared that the match would end in a goalless draw, defender Kim Young-Gwon scored a VAR-confirmed goal during injury time that would burn itself into the memories of German supporters across the world.
Whatever composure the Germans seemed to possess was lost at that moment as they scrambled to come up with an equalizer in those very critically short stoppage time minutes. Such was their desperation that even goalkeeper-captain Manuel Neuer ran up to the Korean half of the pitch in hopes of making a difference. Instead of saving the day, a second goal was conceded as captain Son Heung-Min fired a decisive shot into the net and confirmed Germany’s exit from the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Many questions were raised on that day, but two things were certain: the South Korean national squad proved that they were no pushovers and a Hallyu drama/movie will be made someday based on this true story starring actors who are prettier than girls in many respects.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup was also notable for being the FIFA World Cup where England yet again failed to bring something home (hint: it’s gold and the top part looks like a football) and for the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee Technology or VAR for short in an international level tournament. VAR technology is intended to eliminate mistakes in referee decisions by having a team of referees which assist a main referee on the pitch by observing a match through a number of cameras positioned at strategic locations around the field. In the event the main referee requires a second opinion on whether to disallow a goal or send off a player, the main referee can do the “my flat screen TV is this big” hand signal and go to the Referee Review Area (RRA) where he can consult with the VAR team before making a decision.
The technology had already been trialled at smaller leagues and introduction of this Sauron-esque surveillance technology into the major tournament re-wrote the rules of the game. Where before, players could drop down and roll around a pitch to infinity and beyond in response to a tackle in an attempt to win a free kick, now, such antics will only cause amazement at how one could expect to get away with what is clearly a blatant dive (and excessive rolling). Gone are the days where a referee can rule that a goal didn’t happen or allow a goal scored by a ‘divine’ hand because they failed to see what had actually happened.
Like the VAR, various technologies have been introduced into the sporting world with varying degrees of impact. While some only impact the endorsing athletes by increasing their bank balance, others have a wide-reaching impact that affects the sport as a whole. In the spirit of this year’s World IP Day theme Reach for Gold: IP and Sports, here are some technologies which may be touted as game-changers, forcing players to learn new unwritten rules if they want to win, and in some cases, causing new written rules to become implemented.
Voodoo Ball
While VAR technology was one of the more notable game-changing technologies to be introduced in the world of football, some of the most controversial ones have to do with the football itself. With each tournament comes a specially designed football which becomes the official ball of the tournament, and with that, a bunch of critics lambasting the performance of the specially designed football. One of the most maligned football design is that of the official football for the 2010 FIFA World Cup named the Jabulani which means ‘celebrate’ in Zulu.
Consisting of eight spherically moulded panels and no external seams, the Jabulani is an incredibly smooth ball compared to the traditional pentagon-hexagon panelled football. While this design feature may appear innocuous, the practical effect was that this resulted in a ball that was very hard to control. Imagine looking straight at a target and punting the ball towards the target only to see it change direction at the last minute. It’s one thing to deliberately misdirect a shot so that it lands in the goal or in the possession of a teammate, it’s another to aim a shot at a target and see the ball ending up anywhere but near that general area.
The Jabulani’s erratic trajectory was attributed to this smooth spherical design which encouraged a particular phenomenon called knuckling where a spinning ball is able to travel in a curved path due to, you guessed it, aerodynamics. The spinning motion creates a difference in pressure of air zones surrounding the ball, and like an aeroplane wing, this causes the ball to travel in a curved path instead of a straight path. Skilled prodigies such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Lionel Messi are able to deftly create this effect and enthral audiences with their show-stopping passes and shots. Unfortunately, the Jabulani, with its unpredictable nature, meant that these skills were for naught as missed passes and shots off target plagued the matches.
As the ball was so hard to control, people who were expecting plays that involved creative passing and mind-bending trick shots that were commonly displayed in a world-class tournament were rewarded with missed goals, crosses that never seemed to connect, and a bunch of players in red and blue jerseys passing the ball among themselves until one person got bored of passing and broke formation to score the winning goal.
Game-changing level: 1 World Cup tournament
A Leg Up on the Competition
Blade Runner is a movie people may have heard of but not many may have watched. For the uninitiated, it’s a sci-fi movie where Indiana Jones asks a woman who is unaware that she’s not really human some weird and discriminatory questions and gets chased around by a shirtless guy in the rain. In the sequel, Ryan Gosling plays the patronymic artificial human hunter who goes on a long journey of discovery which ends with him discovering that he’s a sad lonely artificial human who’s not so special after all.
Others may recognise “Blade Runner” as the moniker of former Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius due to his iconic running blade prostheses which are manufactured by Össur. At one point, he was disallowed from competing against full-bodied competitors whose legs extend all the way to their toes because his sports prostheses would grant him an unfair advantage over non-prostheses-wearing people. Wait, what? Really?
Developed by inventor Van L. Philips, these running blade prostheses enable amputees to live an active lifestyle that includes running, jumping and hiking. Having lost his foot in a skiing accident, Phillips was unable to find any foot prosthesis which could perform well enough for sporting activities which motivated him to look for a solution himself. His solution was to use a carbon fibre strip that could act like a spring, storing potential energy during foot-fall and releasing it to enable the wearer to run and jump with greater ease.
It was this reason why the International Association of Athletics Federations did not permit Pistorius from competing with non-disabled athletes because they believe that this spring function allowed Pistorius to run faster with less effort. Considering the fact that Paralympic sprinter Marlon Shirley holds the world record for 100m dash at 11.09 seconds (that’s 48.91 seconds faster than what this author can manage) which is 1.30 seconds more than current world record held by Olympic sprinter Maurice Green who finished in 9.79 seconds, concerns that all runners are not running on equal footing (pun definitely intended) would be justifiable.
To ascertain whether the running blade prostheses did provide Pistorius with an added advantage, a sports lab in Germany invited Pistorius to perform a series of tests. What they found was that once a certain speed was achieved, Pistorius used 25% less energy than non-disabled athletes and that his prostheses led to less vertical motion combined with 30% less mechanical work for lifting the body.
Consequently, Pistorius appealed against the decision and his appeal was upheld when it was determined that not all factors were taken into consideration and that there was no proof that his prostheses gave him an advantage over other sprinters. Without the IAAF stopping him, he went on to run in events with non-disabled sprinters, failing to qualify in the 2008 Olympics but making it in 2012, and managing to win a silver medal in the IAAF World Championships in 2011.
Game-changing level: 1 running man
Water off a Duck’s Back
Mention Speedos, and one may picture the iconic genericized triangular swimming briefs that are ill-equipped to cover things that the general public are better off not seeing. No, wait, that’s the mankini, sorry. Speedo also manufactures other swimwear which thankfully provide more coverage, one of them being the LZR Racer swimming suits co-designed with NASA.
Extending from the shoulder all the way to the ankles, the LZR Racer swimming suits help improve a swimmer’s performance by reducing drag, improving flow of oxygen to muscles and reducing muscle oscillation. Parts of the swimming suit compress body parts at certain locations, improving the swimmer’s shape to be more hydrodynamic and allowing the swimmer to glide easier through water. The material also improves swimming performance by being less drag resistant and trapping air pockets against the swimmer’s body. This results in increased buoyancy which reduces the swimmer’s effort in propelling themselves forward.
So amazing was the upgrade in performance that in the 2008 Summer Olympics held in Beijing, 23 out of the 25 world records broken were achieved by swimmers competing in the aforementioned LZR Racer suit. In December of the same year, 17 world records were broken by swimmers wearing the hi-tech swimsuits in the European Short Course Championships in Croatia. Overall, it was estimated that over 100 new world records were achieved with the assistance of this space grade aquatic apparel.
As a result, the swimming authority FINA has issued a ban on all full-body swimming suits, limiting coverage from waist to knee for men and shoulder to knee for women. While it’s unfortunate that men are robbed of their modesty by being forced to bare their nipples in full view of the general public with this new rule, by limiting the length of the swimming suits, the rule intends to shift the winning factor to be based on the physical performance of the swimmer and not the physical attributes of the swimmer’s swimwear.
Undeterred by the ban, Speedo came up with Fastskin 3 range which is an improved version of the LZR Racer. With 3 times more body compression, 16% less passive drag, 5.2% less active drag and improvement of oxygen economy by 11% when compared against normal swimming attire, the Fastskin 3 makes the LZR racer look like some old-timey heavy diving suit. As swimsuit manufactures try harder and harder to push the envelope, one wonders if a time will come when swimming becomes an adult-only event where swimmers will be restricted from having any fabrics on their bodies and spectators are assured that the swimming times achieved are based on pure athletic performance without aid from any performance enhancing fabrics.
Game-changing level: An entire sport
There you have it, 3 technologies which made great splashes in the world of sports. While it is arguable that none of these technologies did improve the sport as a whole, one thing that did happen was that they forced people to revisit the universal values sports encompass: excellence, respect and fair play. And as we cheer on our sporting heroes such as the indefatigable Datuk Lee Chong Wei who, despite being slapped with a doping ban and struck with nasopharynx cancer, is still going for the gold, we are reminded that through hard work and persistence, we may one day achieve what we dare to believe.
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