Why are some innovations permitted and encouraged while others banned?
While new technology can increase interest in a sport and allow different athletes to express athletic excellence, it can also transform the sport into a competition among engineers and not athletes. Sport is at its core about creating inefficiencies to test skills. Technologies that make sports too efficient compromise its very existence. The Polara golf ball with its asymmetric dimple pattern was deemed to be a technology that usurped the skill that golf tests – driving accuracy. Other technologies may be banned or regulated for reasons of safety, cost, or tradition.
