Performance Standards Governing New Materials for Sports
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Performance Standards Governing New Materials for Sports J. Nadine Gelberg "With a lighter but stiffer shaft and heavier clubhead the ball goes farther. Easier,"1 claims a 1975 advertisement for Shakespeare graphite irons. New materials such as graphite, boron, and titanium, have made sports equipment stronger yet lighter and thus more powerful. For athletes, sports have become, as the ad stated, easier. Serves over one hundred miles per hour are commonplace on the professional tennis tour, and athletes such as Tiger Woods are making par five golf holes obsolete. Sports organizations do not, however, always embrace these innovations that facilitate play. Major League Baseball retains its traditional mandate requiring only wood bats, the International Tennis Federation prohibited double strung tennis rackets, and the United States Golf Association banned asymmetrically dimpled golf balls. These technology regulations emerged to prevent the sport from becoming "easier," protecting sport integrity. Compromising the challenge of sport cuts to the heart of the activity. The sporting arena is a unique enterprise. In most businesses, if a new technology compromises the human skills necessary to perform a task, no philosophic principles or practical demands require the technology to be banned. In sports, however, once the human component is compromised, its entire purpose of testing human potential and skills vanishes. In sport, the process of production is paramount to the product. In other words, while we are interested in who gets from the starting line to the finish line the fastest, how they get there is of equal if not more importance. Runners cannot run across the middle of the track but must traverse the distance around the track. In rowing, athletes cannot rely on a motor to get from start to finish. Rock climbers choose not to take a helicopter or elevator to reach the summit. These artificial inefficiencies are what make sport a test of athletic skill and an arena to display athletic excellence. Preserving these artificial inefficiencies MRS BULLETIN/MARCH 1998
often requires banning innovative equipment, materials, or designs. Historically, sports organizations have implemented ad hoc technology regulations responding to immediate crises perceived to threaten sport integrity. These rules most often focused on design standards, regulating, for example, dimple distribution on golf balls or plastic coatings on tennis racket strings. Sports organizations could better protect sport integrity with a proactive technology policy strategy based on performance standards that balance athletic challenge, sporting tradition, and technological innovation. Balancing Athletic Challenge, Sporting Tradition, and Technological Innovation Balancing athletic challenge, sporting tradition, and technological innovation protects sport integrity by preserving the test of human skills, the history and aesthetic of a sport, while allowing the innovative designs and materials that can encourage a sport to grow and provide new opportuniti
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