It today’s world, sport cannot go together without technology. With the ever growing development of new technologies, they have always tried to be implemented into sports. Because technology can give sports something nothing else can, an unmistakable truth. Or so they say. Due to the fact that people are, well, people, they are bound to make mistakes. It is because we are human, we are not robots, that we can make mistakes, while robots make them only if they are malfunctioning. This is especially emphasized in sports, where human eyes can often deceive their owners, the referees most importantly, but also players, coaches and the fans. That is why these days there are many discussions about installing video technology into sports, mostly football. What does technology actually mean for sports?
Here I would like to emphasize that there are already sports using technology, like tennis and cricket, to name some. It helped the referees a lot, to minimize and correct some mistakes they make. But apparently, not all problems are solved like this. Players that have been playing for a longer period of time, and have not grown up with these kinds of technologies, are not convinced that it works properly. This suspicion is probably understandable, because when they were first starting their professional sports careers, they did not probably even dream about something like this would exist. But this technology has been tested time after time, and skeptical players, such as Roger Federer, have learned to live with it and accept it, although probably not so reluctantly.
This technology used in sports is called Hawk-Eye line-calling system, or just Hawk-eye for short. It was invented by a British computer expert Paul Hawkins. It is now used in tennis, where six or more cameras, situated around the court are linked together, track the path of the ball. Then those six or more cameras combine their separate views and make a 3D representation of the path of the ball. For tennis, or basically any other sport, this means that any close line call can be checked, quickly and accurately. This is not always used on tennis tournaments, though. For instance, the French Open is not using this technology because the tournament is played on clay courts and thus the print of the ball on the ground can easily be seen. Maybe this will change one day, because you can’t always be 100% sure you are looking at the right print.
These days there have been a lot of talks about introducing this technology to the sport of football. The sympathizers of this idea have been especially loud after the South Africa FIFA World Cup 2010, where a lot of mistakes by the referees have been made (an Argentina goal allowed although the player was offside, England goal not seen in a crucial moment). However, referees are only human, and they are bound to make mistakes because they can not help it, so i do not think all those critics were fair to them. On the other hand, a recent statement was made from the UEFA president Michel Platini, who is not thrilled about the goal-line technology, saying that this would reduce football to a video game. I don’t believe that other sports who have this technology have been reduced to a video game. Furthermore, he also admits that referees can make mistakes and that there are many cameras on the field that can catch any disputable moment. So why not help football, or any other sport, to see these disputable moments clearly and to resolve them without making mistakes. Or is it better to hear a mass of critics every time something like this happens? I am sure the referees would like this kind of help, then they couldn’t be blamed for anything and wouldn’t have to listen to all the nonsense people say about them the other day, or worse.