Prior to this year, sport enthusiasts fiddling with their kits or modifying their apparatuses used to only dream about what they could come up with if they could only improve X, Y, and Z on their equipment.
Then came the great Gatsbys.
David Sainsbury, philanthropist and shareholder of the United Kingdom’s third largest supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, founded the Gatsby Charitable Foundation in 1967. The foundation funds several areas of scientific research, including sports engineering through its Gatsby Innovation Awards.
In partnership with Loughborough University’s Sport Technology Institute, the awards are designed to give lone inventors and small businesses in the U.K. the resources to help advance their products and prototypes through £400,000 in funds and access to the institute’s expertise and test facilities.
“Sport tends to attract that kind of curious mind. But many people simply don’t have the formal skills or business acumen to take what is a good idea and make that a commercial reality,” said professor Mike Caine, the institute’s director.
The four winning products and designs from the inaugural Gatsby Innovation Awards held in May 2008 included a new putter grip that helps golfers achieve better putting accuracy, a portable hydration monitor that displays the body’s hydration level in real time during exercise, and heated goalkeeper gloves which keep hands warm during chilly conditions.
PGA Coach Philip Gazeley started on his product four years ago, originally trying to design a new putter head.
Gazeley figured that finding a way to get the putter head to go back straighter, rather than on an arc, could possibly benefit the golfer. After speaking to engineers and design consultants, he found that by changing the grip instead and making it twice as wide, he achieved his desired result of reducing the rotation of the putter head during putts.
“I realized if you put your thumbs together, your shoulders automatically stayed on line and [your] hips and feet and everything all stayed together,” said Gazeley. “It would arrest the rotation of the putter face potentially making putting more accurate and easy.”
That’s all right in theory, but in order to prove it scientifically, Gazeley needed the help of the Gatsby grant, which awarded him access to Loughborough’s state-of-the-art testing facilities to prove his new grip worked beyond a scientific doubt.
Although Gazeley doesn’t have the final report, early results are in his favour. Caine and his colleagues successfully measured substantially different changes in foot pressure when using Gazeley’s thicker grip in comparison to standard sized grips, and were able measure accuracy through a range of different lengths of putts.
“We have taken an array of competitive golfers right up to the top standard and consistently across the group you’re able to measure an improvement,” said Caine.
PGA stars like Colin Montgomerie, Miguel Jimenez, and Shingo Katayama currently use the grip. Gazeley believes thousands of golfers worldwide are using it.
“It’s nice to take an idea through to the finish,” said Gazeley. “You know we’ve proved our point and so hopefully we release [the final Loughborough report] in the next couple of months for everyone to see.”
In contrast, Leon Marsh’s portable hydration monitor and Darren Heyes’ heated goalkeeping glove inventions didn’t arrive in Loughborough’s lab with a successful track record like Gazeley’s putter grip.
Marsh came up with his idea in his final year at Brunel University in Uxbridge, England, while completing his design degree. For one of his final projects he had to develop a new product, or try and improve an existing one.
He came up with his idea after a workout at Brunel’s gym when we saw someone bring a bottle of water into a sauna. He started thinking about how much water one should drink to get re-hydrated after a sweaty workout followed by a steam.
“I just thought that’s worth looking into to see if there’s anything available to do something like that,” said Marsh.
After extensive research, Marsh established that his idea was original. He then spent the next four years developing his portable hydration monitor. His design works by having a temperature sensor that goes into the ear to measure the subject’s core body temperature. Changes in the measured core body temperature are used to calculate hydration level by a processor within a wristwatch, displayed onto the watch for the subject to see.
Before he had heard of their Gatsby awards, Marsh presented his first prototype to Loughborough University, but found during its trials that it was not robust enough to yield the results needed so that he could present it to a manufacturer.
Marsh needed funding for another prototype, and a government grant had just been pulled.
Luckily, he had a positive initial contact with Loughborough.
“I was just catching up with them and asking if they knew of any grants around them, and it just so happened they did have the Gatsby grant in place at that time,” said Marsh. “So I applied and was successful, fortunately.”
As for Heyes, after a long career in professional soccer as a goalkeeper playing for clubs such as Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest, he attended Nottingham Trent University where he gained qualifications in sports science and marketing. He now runs a successful soccer coaching business for goalkeepers called Katz Keepers.
One night with another former goalkeeper, Ian Andrews, Heyes brainstormed, trying to come up with solutions to problems faced while playing. Initially, they researched foams being for keeper’s gloves but figured they couldn’t take it any further. Heyes recalled the cold English nights that froze his hands and feet, making it difficult to catch a soccer ball.
“We wanted to look at the physiology behind it … So we tried to incorporate something that kept your hands warm [by aiding blood flow] while improving your performance as well,” said Heyes.
Before winning his Gatsby, Heyes went to a colleague who had just finished a product design degree at Aston University in Birmingham to look at different glove designs, logos, and shapes, seeing how he could incorporate a heating system. The final design was so good that it ended up winning a product design award at the university.
Over the next five years, Heyes and his partners used every penny from their goalkeeping camps to fund their glove prototype. They initially tested at John Moores University in Liverpool, and received positive results.
“It [showed] some sort of significant difference on your hand,” said Heyes.
But Heyes looked at running another three or four goalkeeping camps to fund further testing. The money and progress on the glove came in slowly, making it very difficult on them.
Then, while Heyes was head of youth development and goalkeeping coach at Notts County Football Club (the oldest Football league in the world) in England, one of the parents who worked at Loughborough told Heyes about the Gatsby awards.
“We spent our last £1,500-£2,000 that we had to make a prototype just to get to our pitch for the Gatsby. Sort of all-or-nothing for us, really,” said Heyes. “It’s very difficult when you spend money on an idea you’re not sure is going to work. Especially if you have money.”
It took Heyes six long years to get from the original idea to where he is now, awaiting his results from Loughborough.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day was it? But the Gatsby’s moved it along considerably […] in the last six months,” said Heyes.
Heyes and Marsh envision a strong transferability of their products to other areas. Marsh sees possible applications in the medical field for his hydration monitor as the most accurate current way to assess hydration involves invasive tests in a controlled laboratory. Heyes believes his heated gloves will have use in other sports such as football, skiing, cycling, and sailing.
As for what it’s like turning their ideas into reality, Gazeley sums it up best with an old English saying: “From little acorns oak trees will grow. Very, very difficult if you haven’t got that sort of major funding to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt.”
