50 Fun Facts About Technology in Sports

Which British inventor built the ball-tracking system that brought line-call challenges to tennis?

Paul Hawkins built it at Roke Manor Research to enhance television coverage of cricket, and only later did tennis adopt it for line-call challenges.

Hawk-Eye was first used on television in 2001 to analyse which cricket decision?

Leg before wicket: Channel 4's coverage showed viewers where the ball would have gone had the batsman's pad not been in the way, and umpires later got the same tool for reviews.

What colour is the virtual first-down line that TV viewers have seen on American football broadcasts since 1998?

Yellow: the line exists only on screen, drawn so that players appear to run over it as if it were painted on the grass.

Which company bought Hawk-Eye Innovations in March 2011?

Sony bought the firm from investors led by the Wisden Group, the cricket publisher that had taken it over in 2006, after it was put up for sale.

Which Grand Slam first used Hawk-Eye officially for player challenges, in 2006?

US Open: the push came from its own 2004 quarter-final, where television replays showed several wrong line calls against Serena Williams in her loss to Jennifer Capriati.

Which 2021 Grand Slam was the first to use Hawk-Eye Live for all matches, with no line judges?

Australian Open: with staff cut during the pandemic, every court was called by machine, and the recorded 'out' calls were voiced by key workers as a tribute.

What does VAR stand for in football?

Video assistant referee: despite the title, the official only advises from a bank of screens, and the referee on the pitch always makes the final decision.

Which country hosted the first World Cup to use VAR?

Russia: at the 2018 finals a referee first waved play on, then gave France a penalty against Australia after a call from the VAR, and Antoine Griezmann scored it.

A 2016 Dutch cup tie between Willem II and which club gave VAR its first top-level competitive test?

Ajax won 5–0, and the test proved its worth when the VAR had a Willem II midfielder sent off after the referee first showed only a yellow card.

VAR's 2018 protocol let it review which cards?

Direct reds: a second yellow card was left to the referee alone, in keeping with the protocol's aim of interfering with the game as little as possible.

Where does the English Premier League station its VAR teams?

Stockley Park: the VAR hub sits on a west London business park, so the VAR can be hundreds of miles from the pitch being judged.

Whose disallowed goal at the 2010 World Cup pushed FIFA to reopen the goal-line debate?

Frank Lampard's shot in the last-16 tie hit the underside of the bar and bounced well over the line, yet the officials missed it and England went out, beaten 4–1.

Who reopened football's goal-line technology debate in 2010?

Sepp Blatter had long resisted it, and football's lawmakers voted in March 2010 to drop the idea for good; a wrongly disallowed England goal that summer changed his mind.

GoalControl, the camera system that judged goals at the 2014 World Cup, came from which country?

Germany: GoalControl's cameras gave the World Cup its first goal by technology when a Benzema shot hit the post and crossed the line off the Honduras goalkeeper.

Who scored the first Premier League goal decisively awarded by goal-line technology?

Edin Džeko miscued his shot for Manchester City and a Cardiff defender thought he had cleared it, but the technology told the referee it had already crossed the line.

Fox's FoxTrax system, launched in 1996, made which object glow on television?

A hockey puck: electronics inside it let Fox paint a blue glow around it on screen, with a trail to show how hard a shot had been hit.

Which country hosted the first men's World Cup to use semi-automated offside technology?

Qatar: twelve tracking cameras under each stadium roof followed 29 points on every player, though a video official still had to confirm each call.

Which motorsport made the titanium 'halo' head guard compulsory on its cars in 2018?

Formula One: the bar over the cockpit was credited with saving Romain Grosjean in 2020, when his car split a barrier in Bahrain and burst into flames.

What was the name of the sensor-equipped Adidas ball used at the 2022 World Cup?

Its motion sensor tracked every touch 500 times per second and fed data to the VAR team.

Which country hosted the first World Cup played with Adidas's black-and-white Telstar ball?

Mexico: the 1970 finals were broadcast live around the world, and the Telstar's black panels helped it show up on black-and-white television sets.

In cricket, what does DRS stand for?

Decision Review System: a captain or batter asks for a review by making a 'T' with the arms, and each side is allowed only a few failed challenges per innings.

The cricket Player Referral system was first tested in 2008 in a match between India and which team?

Sri Lanka hosted India for the trial, and their batsman Tillakaratne Dilshan, given out by the umpire, appealed to the TV official and was reprieved.

Hot Spot in cricket relies on which kind of camera?

Infrared: friction from even a faint edge warms the bat for an instant, and the cameras show that as a bright white spot.

The Snickometer detects a faint edge by pairing replays with what?

Stump microphone audio: a faint edge shows as a spike in the sound wave at the instant the ball passes the bat; Allan Plaskett devised it in the 1990s.

After a disputed 1960 Olympic 100 m freestyle final, what did swimming install at the end of each lane?

Touchpads: the stopwatches had Lance Larson ahead, yet the judges gave gold to John Devitt, and the row led to pads that swimmers stop themselves.

A photo-finish camera records only what?

The line itself: the camera scans one thin slice at the finish over and over, so reading across the picture you are looking at time, not distance.

Which watchmaker first served as official Olympic timekeeper at the 1932 Los Angeles Games?

Omega took the job in 1932 and has held it at most Games since, though Seiko's quartz clocks timed the Tokyo Olympics of 1964.

Who ran the first electronically timed 100 metres under ten seconds, at the 1968 Olympics?

Jim Hines saw 9.89 flash up from a light beam on the line, but the official photo-finish gave 9.95, a world record that lasted until 1983.

Which agency's wind-tunnel experts helped Speedo test fabrics for its LZR Racer swimsuit?

NASA: Speedo approached its drag researchers after the 2004 Olympics, despite jokes that swimwear 'isn't rocket science', and the finished suit rewrote the record books in 2008.

In the NFL, what colour flag does a head coach throw to challenge a ruling on the field?

Red: the challenge system arrived in 1999, and a coach may only throw the flag while his team still has a timeout left to stake on it.

Swimming's 2010 rules banned race suits made of which material?

Polyurethane: suits made with it were outlawed from 2010 because they made swimmers more buoyant, after a flood of world records in 2008 and 2009.

Which fashion brand collaborated on the look of Speedo's LZR Racer?

Comme des Garçons, the Japanese fashion house, gave the suit its look, yet Japan's own Olympic swimmers were tied by contract to three Japanese makers and at first could not wear it.

What are the stiff plates in 'super shoes' such as Nike's Vaporfly made of?

Carbon fibre: the plate sits in thick foam, and the times it produced led World Athletics in 2020 to cap soles at 40 mm and allow only one plate per shoe.

Eliud Kipchoge first wore the Vaporfly Elite in 2017 at which sub-two-hour marathon attempt?

Breaking2: on the Monza motor-racing circuit Kipchoge ran 2:00:25, and the time never counted as a record because pacemakers rotated in and out.

Which early electronic line judge was introduced at Wimbledon in 1980?

Cyclops: beams of light a centimetre above the court caught serves that landed long, until ball-tracking cameras retired it at Wimbledon in 2007.

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

Épée: a hit anywhere on the body counts and there are no priority rules, so a switch in the tip could do the judges' job; foil waited until 1956 and sabre until 1988.

The NBA adopted its shot clock in 1954 to end what tactic?

Stalling: in 1950 Fort Wayne beat Minneapolis 19–18, the lowest-scoring game in NBA history, by holding the ball instead of shooting.

Which Syracuse Nationals owner pushed the NBA to adopt the 24-second shot clock?

Danny Biasone and his general manager Leo Ferris reasoned that a good game had 120 shots, divided the 2,880 seconds of play by that, and got 24.

Who invented television instant replay for CBS in 1963?

Tony Verna rigged a 1,200-pound videotape machine to show a touchdown again at once, and the announcer had to tell viewers the team had not scored twice.

Instant replay made its debut during which college football rivalry game?

Army–Navy: after technical hitches, the only replay shown that day was a single touchdown by Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh, run again at full speed.

A batter who breaks MLB's 2023 pitch clock is charged with what?

A strike: the rule cuts both ways, since a pitcher who lets the timer run out is charged with a ball, and it was tested for years in the minor leagues first.

How does goal-line technology tell the referee that a goal has been scored?

A signal on the watch: it vibrates and shows a message within a second, and by rule the alert goes to the match officials alone, never to the crowd.

Who became the first batsman given out by cricket's television third umpire, in 1992?

Sachin Tendulkar was run out for 11 in Durban after the on-field umpire, unsure, handed the decision to a colleague watching the television replay.

Which system did Statcast's TrackMan radar replace as MLB's official tracker in 2017?

PITCHf/x, a three-camera system that first appeared in the 2006 postseason, drew the pitch-path graphics viewers saw on television until radar took over.

Which company's RFID tags began tracking NFL players for Next Gen Stats in 2014?

Zebra Technologies, a maker of barcode printers, put location beacons in every player's shoulder pads, and tagged the referees and the first-down sticks too.

Which referee's aid, first seen at a World Cup in 2014, marks where the defensive wall must stand?

Vanishing spray: the foam, developed in Brazil in 2000, disappears within about a minute, just long enough to hold the wall ten yards back.

What does a Whoop band score as a daily percentage to tell athletes whether to train?

Recovery: the score blends heart-rate variability, resting heart rate, sleep and breathing rate; golfer Nick Watney took a shift in his breathing data as the cue for a Covid test in 2020, and it was positive.

Baseball's Jugs radar gun was developed by someone in which job?

A college coach: Michigan State's Danny Litwhiler had a campus police car drive onto the field to clock his pitchers, by his own account, then developed the Jugs Gun, whose prototype is now in Cooperstown.

In cycling, 'mechanical doping' means hiding what inside a racing bike?

An electric motor: the first proven case came at the 2016 cyclo-cross world championships, where officials found one in a Belgian rider's spare bike and she was banned for six years.

The 'robot umpires' first tried in baseball's Atlantic League in 2019 use tracking technology to call what?

Balls and strikes: at first the plate umpire simply heard each call through an earpiece, while later versions let players challenge a human call instead.