In modern times we have seen how increasing size, costs, security concerns and cultural and environmental impacts are challenging host cities and countries that are bidding for the Olympic Games and other major international sporting events. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was one of the first governing organisations to respond to such challenges, by identifying sustainable development as a central issue on its agenda over the past decade. For example, the IOC has published its Guide on Sport, Environment and Sustainable Development in June 2006. This guide was created to provide methodological and practical tools to the sporting community based on the major principles of sustainable development. This follows the amendment of the IOC charter in 1996 and the development of the IOC Agenda 21, a tool designed to encourage all members of the Olympic movement to adopt sustainable development practices, especially when hosting sporting events. It comes as no surprise that the subsequent host cities of Olympic Games held in Sydney, Beijing and more recently Vancouver identified sustainable development as central themes in their bids and associated mission statements. This has resulted in extraordinary efforts and results relating to reduced environmental impact, and improved economic and cultural performance of these sporting events.
The importance of sustainable development of sporting events has just reached a new high in the case of the 2022 FIFA World Soccer Cup bid. The new concept for stadium development proposed by Qatar, the recent winner of the 2022 FIFA World Soccer Cup bid, is an extraordinary example of a new approach to sustainable development of sporting events. Qatar has proposed to develop novel “recyclable/reusable” stadia for this event that will be dismantled after the tournament and offered to poorer countries in the region. Although some sceptics believe that at present this concept is not feasible, this initiative launches a new chapter in the history of sporting events. We all look forward to seeing history come to life in 2022.
The 2nd issue of Vol. 3 of Sports Technology, the first regular issue in 2010, after the special issue on Sports Surfaces, offers an attractive mix of articles.
Fuss and Niegl reviewed the design and mechanics of rope brakes and belay devices by introducing a new design classification. Frossard et al. investigated and catalogued the characteristics of throwing frames for disabled shot-putters. Their results provide benchmark information for the construction of a throwing frame even if the relationship between frame characteristics and athlete's performance was inconclusive.
Cross contributed two articles: one introduces a cheap, yet accurate, measurement method of tennis court speed used for quality control of surfaces at tennis facilities, organisations and events (e.g. the Australian Open). The other one models the impact forces to the hand by tennis racquets and provides strategies for reducing these impact forces.
Kuzmin et al. investigated the relationship between ski running-surfaces and capillary drag by introducing a new mathematical method for quantifying wettability with a dimensionless wettability factor. Dickson et al. analysed the properties of boccia balls and classified them based on the accuracy of ball delivery. Richie and Selamat compared the design of Asian paddles with both experimental and computational fluid dynamics approaches and ranked their fluid-dynamic efficiency.
Featuring a female athlete on the cover of Sports Technology is long overdue. The cover image of this issue shows the sport climber Johanna Ernst, who won the 2008 and 2009 IFSC Climbing World Cups and was the youngest ever gold medallist at the IFSC Climbing Championship in 2009.