Rubbers form the grip on many pieces of sporting equipment such as tennis rackets and weights, while plastics are found on equipment that requires lightweight flexibility such as studded boots where plastic in the form of PU provides the undersole material
Composites
Composites are a mix of two or more materials that provide different properties depending on which raw materials are used. For example one of the most commonly used in fibreglass which is of benefit as it combines the properties of strength and flexibility required.
Fibreglass in found in many pieces of track and field equipment such as pole vault poles.
The manufacture of these materials has changed greatly since the introduction of sporting competition. Early materials were primitive and usually used only because there were no other options available, inflated pigs bladders were first used as footballs because there were no man made fibres at the time, now footballs are leather with some form of plastic coating to help maintain shape. There is now of course greater demand and interest in sports so all the equipment needs to be able to be mass produced and for the companies to make a healthy profit. Factories now reel out thousands of balls, tennis rackets and the like, each day, the demand is huge and in order to make money the materials used in production need to be cheap. This meant that raw materials would no longer suffice, not just because one day the supply of raw materials would run out, but also the equipment made from raw materials didn’t last long enough. Man made materials therefore required to have a mixture of properties to make them functional, materials such as plastics were starting to be used, they were tough and durable but also cheap to manufacture.
In most cases these man made fibres have helped develop the sport that they are used in, but in some cases it can be argued that they have proved a hindrance. In the javelin competition the advent of man made fibres led to a javelin being made that could be thrown, with the right technique, over 100 metres, thus endangering other sports people if the event was taking place in a stadium, and the spectators. The new javelin was too light and needed reconsidering so it couldn’t be thrown as far, a weight was added and reformed to produce the javelin used in competition today which must regulate to weight restraints.
There is the issue also that some materials that are used today are so manufactured, with so much research and money involved in the development, that when it is released onto the market for the general public it can prove costly for some, therefore pricing some people out of the equation, whilst other more fortunate competitors can afford what the sports companies would have us believe an `edge`.
The benefits of these materials can only be discovered by meticulous research by scientists and development teams, materials that would never have been used or even thought of before are forming products that some take for granted. In recent years the technology used in formula one cars has been applied to running shoes, whilst materials such as Carbon Kevlar, used in the manufacturing of tanks has been used in football boots.
