Composite tennis racquet

The composite tennis racquet’s arrival ushered in a new era of power and fitness. Its driver was legendry Czech player Ivan Lendl.

By the end of the 1970s, the aggressive baseliner was common in elite tennis, but before 1975, three of the Opens (Australian, Wimbledon and the US) were still being played on fast grass, and the chip-and-chargers, the serve-and-volleyers, still got a look in. John McEnroe came to dominate, and the tradition of exciting exponents like Budge, Laver, Gonzales, Newcombe and Rosewall, King, Navratilova and Goolagong-Cawley, was still alive.

Then the wooden racquet went the way of the dodo, giving way to a composite model.

This ushered in a new era of power and fitness, embodied in one man: the frighteningly efficient Lendl. His ability to pull off pacey topspin-enhanced passing shots, his introduction of brand-new, radical angles from the baseline thanks to vicious dip, made him the real pioneer.

Treadmill

A concept initially devised for convicts to crush corn and pump water eventually became the most popular training aid for the masses. It is believed the concept of a human leg-powered device to serve as a sort of winch, or crane, was first devised by the Romans when the empire was at its height and construction was central to its prosperity.

It took a while for anyone to wake up to the possibility that this ingenious device could be used for any purpose other than punishment or production. In 1952, however, two doctors from Washington University, Robert Bruce and Wayne Quinton, used an updated version to test the heart-lung capacities of patients.

Bruce became known as the father of “exercise cardiology”, and his “Bruce protocol”, which tested cardiac patients with exercise (the accepted wisdom was that people with heart conditions rest) became popular in the medical profession and is still used today.