Taylor: Innovation in the world of sports

Living in the Bay Area, it seems that everyone has a great idea. Everyone dreams of leaving college to found their own start-up and either become the next Mark Zuckerberg or the entrepreneur who he buys out for a billion dollars. Most of these ambitions will likely fail, some might succeed in turning a healthy profit—but only a precious few will change the world.

Even sports are not immune to this fever, from wacky new games to social media start-ups. It seems as if we’re introduced to a new aspect of the game on a daily basis. So, in an ever-changing field, which sports invention rises above the rest?

Maybe we should turn to the ball, the most vital of all objects. Essential in the vast majority of sports, if no one had invented the ball, the world would be a much more boring place. All four of America’s biggest sports wouldn’t exist—before hockey fans get too excited at the demise of baseball, basketball and football, they should note that the precursor to the puck was a ball—so we’d be doomed to watch NASCAR and horse racing. However important the ball is, though, I’m going to disqualify it because I don’t quite believe that anyone can claim intellectual property over it. That would be like someone claiming they invented turning left.

So perhaps a modern item of equipment would be a more appropriate choice: the running shoe. Besides swimming, pretty much every athletic pursuit features some type of high-tech footwear. Just walk into any sports shop, and you’ll encounter a wall of shoes of every color and variety imaginable. There are even shoes that aren’t shoes but instead gloves for your feet. They don’t just protect us from cuts and other injuries; they also boost our grip and acceleration.

Speaking of those injuries, we can’t ignore modern medicine and physical therapy. It is pretty phenomenal how far we have come in just the past hundred years or so. Injuries that were once debilitating are now routinely treated. Just think of how many professionals have torn their ACLs and come back fitter and stronger. Or think of the miraculous story of Bolton soccer player Fabrice Muamba, who just a few weeks ago technically died of a heart attack, yet is still with us and may even be able to make a comeback one day.

However, it is hard to find a single specific medical invention that has been truly revolutionary. It is really the sum of hundreds and thousands of steps, some big, others small, that makes up modern medicine. However, forced to choose one, the science of hydration stands out. Until the late <\#213>60s, we completely misunderstood this. It was thought disadvantageous to drink fluids during athletic activity and thus was discouraged, a philosophy that seems ridiculous in today’s sports world.

One of the most recent, key sports technologies, evident both because of its use in some sports and its distinct rejection by others, has been Hawk-Eye. This system of cameras and computers tracks the movement of the ball in games like tennis and cricket, providing a high-tech check on controversial decisions. More over, players, referees and fans have generally welcomed its use. Except in soccer, where, despite a growing number of cases of crucial mistakes made by officials, FIFA has so far resisted implementing such a system.

My choice, though, is none of the above. Easy to miss because it’s technically designed not to be seen but to alter the way that other things are, I pick the humble contact lens. Levels of shortsightedness in the United States could be as much as 40 percent, making it perhaps the most widespread disability. Whereas the other suggestions above benefit all budding athletes, eyesight correction takes a significant portion of the population who would otherwise not be able to live up to their full potential and removes this obstacle.

Most of the time you would never know this, but occasionally it’s made clear when a contact lens falling out exposes the human frailty of a seemingly invincible professional athlete. Suddenly you realize that they’re not that different from you after all; until they pop the lens back in and dash back into the action, superpowers restored.

Tom Taylor also writes a second column for WebMD. Give him some more medical innovations at tom.taylor “at” stanford.edu.