It's actually fairly common. Other sibling comments have a lot of examples, but one I'd like to focus on is the swimsuit arms race in competitive swimming. It really got started with Speedo's LZR Racer suit at the 2008 Olympics, where 98% of swimming medals were won by someone wearing one of these suits.

However, there were serious issues with cost and accessibility. These suits cost a lot of money to develop and manufacture, which was passed on to the swim teams. The LZR Racer could cost $550 per suit, with each suit only lasting a handful of races before requiring replacement. This gave a huge advantage to wealthy teams and swimmers with good sponsorship deals, and talented swimmers without a lot of financial resources were left in the dust.

Then there's the basic question of "what skills do we want to measure and reward in this sport?" With swimming, it got to the point where races were won not in the pool, but in the R&D department of swimwear companies. The swimming organizing bodies felt that swimming competitions should be focused on the athletic ability of individual swimmers instead, so advanced swimsuits were banned.

Don't get me wrong, I like F1 a lot, and part of that is the cool cutting-edge technology the teams develop. But for most sports, heavy technological development doesn't lead to more exciting competition, it just adds barriers to entry.

When the National Hockey League allowed synthetic sticks (aluminum, carbon fibre) in the late 1980s there was a quick uptake as players began to learn how to get greater puck velocities over the old wooden ones. The cost to the game is the phenomena of the exploding stick, which happens far more often than with the old lumber ones and can directly affect the outcome of the game as the dejected player skates away from a missed opportunity.

A similar feel is pro cycling and the UCI. Cycling is much cheaper to innovate and test, so the UCI is constantly and aggressively banning new things. Unfortunately consumer bikes generally follow the UCI trends so we miss out on improvements, but the sport retains its “purity”. Very important though - the fastest approach in a Tour de France stage would be a carbon fiber recumbent for the flat sections, then switching to a super light (not aero) bike for large climbs, then switching to a heavier and super aero bike for descents.

Other easy tech that was banned is seats with a lip on the back, so you could push your butt up against it to drive more power. And the “puppy paws” handlebar position - more aero but banned outside of time trials.

The Aluminium Cricket bat was controversial in the 70's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComBathttps://en.wikipedia.org...

I guess other (banned) examples would be the LZR swim suits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZR_Racer) and the Nike Vaporfly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Vaporfly_and_Tokyo_2020_O...)

I think I am also right in saying that you can buy a road bike that is better than the ones permitted in the Tour de France.

There are stories like this in marathon running shoes (something like 3D printed to the athlete's exact gait and basically last just a single race) and swimming (the michael phelps olympics dolphin suit).

I'm sure cycling and golf have been doing things like this since forever.

The question is implied. "How could they possibly have done that?"

The wonderful thing about human language is that often context implies meaning. It’s more than the words on the page.

They’ve been Moneyballing the game for a while with analytics to the point that the MLB had to ban certain defensive techniques. (Analytics says he always hits it there, so put a bunch of defensive players there.)

> I bet there’s room for optimization with gloves

Maybe so, but the demand is just not there with so many play ending up as home runs or strikeouts.

Definitely already begun.

Players diets, sleep schedules, low altitude flights…

Different bat profiles have been around forever, and many players have their own custom profiles that they like.

I think the key innovation that enabled this new profile is the accuracy and quality of data being collected.

Edit: Here's an article talking about some of the bat tracking technology that MLB has deployed in recent years: https://technology.mlblogs.com/introducing-statcast-2023-hig...

No, different bats have been around forever, Babe Ruth's bats looks like a log compared to modern bats. However shifting the taper based on where a player gets most of their hits based on advanced tracking of their hit location is new.

its less about even taper and more about moving weight/center of mass around. Youth bats have been doing that for quite a while. Camwood bats is a great example of moving weight around. In their case, its a training bat.

Ya, it's one of those simple design improvements that seem obvious once you see it, but clearly wasn't obvious because it took so long for someone to think of it.

The granny free throw and the belly putter are both better tools, but they are uncool. We can add the torpedo bat to that list.

Folks will start to use longer bats then and crowd the plate. Of course that'll be countered with more inside pitching.