“You have to pinch yourself at times and think, there are precious few people who can say that their work has influenced products that have appeared in so many World Cup and Champions League finals,” says Prof Andy Harland, professor of sports technology at Loughborough University’s Sports Technology Institute, part of the school of mechanical, electrical and manufacturing engineering.
The “work” he’s referring to are the footballs – kicked by some of the most admired and well-paid feet in the world – which he and his team have been developing in collaboration with adidas. The brand first approached Loughborough University in 2002 wanting to see how the university’s expertise in engineering, aerodynamics, ergonomics and sports science could be used to transform some of its product development ideas into reality.
It’s proved to be a fruitful relationship, resulting in research with far-reaching consequences and products that have changed the game for professional and amateur athletes around the world – making sport safer, more accessible and supporting people to perform at their best. The decades-long collaboration was formally recognised in 2023, when it won the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Bhattacharyya award for the UK’s best industry-academia partnership.
Harland credits the now-retired Prof Roy Jones – the world’s first professor in sports technology – with both his career and the success of the department. “He took a massive punt on me, and I’ve been able to be an engineer, working full-time in sport, ever since,” he says. “It’s twee to say it, but we’re still standing on his shoulders. I mean, he was the architect of all of this.”
Another Loughborough University academic involved in the partnership is Prof Simon Hodder, a professor in environmental ergonomics in the school of design and creative arts. One of his team’s primary areas of research is human thermoregulation – how humans respond to hot and cold environmental conditions. Beginning in 2005 under Prof George Havenith, the team started an ongoing, pioneering project to create body maps of several physiological processes – including sweating rates, skin temperature, temperature sensitivity and wetness sensitivity.
“Our work on sweating has had quite a big impact in terms of how people design sportswear,” says Hodder. “Prior to this work, we knew how much people sweated when they exercised, but we didn’t know exactly how much sweat we produced in different parts of the body, and so we developed a method to understand this.”
As well as inspiring adidas’s Climacool range – now one of the brand’s biggest product franchises, encompassing hats, footwear and everything in between – this research also informed the development of Adipower trousers, cheekily nicknamed “hot pants”.
Developed for the British Cycling team ahead of the 2012 Olympics, the battery-powered trousers were designed to keep the athletes’ leg muscles warm in between their warm-up and their event, and helped Team GB leave the velodrome with a nine-medal haul.
What quickly becomes apparent is, it’s not just the quality of the sports-related research being undertaken at Loughborough University that’s impressive, but also the scope and impact.
The international standards for cricket helmets – which have almost completely eliminated potentially career-ending or even life-threatening facial injuries – were based on their research into short-duration collisions, which was initially undertaken in the development of those World Cup footballs.
What’s more, Harland explains that the Sports Technology Institute alone has more than 30 PhD students working on a huge range of projects, covering everything from women’s sport and parasports to smart textiles.
For Hodder, it’s this broader significance of the work they do that excites him the most. “The same knowledge that helps us to enhance football shirts is exactly the same knowledge that would go into helping improve firefighter clothing,” he says. “Having an influence in advancing the design of clothing, particularly for people who have little choice in actually having to wear it, definitely makes you feel proud.”
Harland has a similarly altruistic outlook. “Seeing products that the people I’ve influenced have worked on is just as thrilling as seeing my own work out there in the world,” he says. “I have a pair of shoes that are old and probably stinky because I’ve worn them a lot, but I can’t bear to throw them away. They were the first shoes that my first PhD student worked on when they went into industry.”
As for what they have coming up next, Hodder is keen to extend his sweat research to women aged 45-65: “Particularly because there’s a really interesting thermophysiological response that comes with menopause,” he says. “It is a very under-represented group.”
As for Harland, 23 years into his career, there’s a fresh angle on footballs that he’s eager to explore. “Unfortunately I can’t tell you exactly what we’ve been doing yet, but let’s just say it relates to the design of footballs and opportunities to advance the game in future,” he explains. “We’re hopeful our research might make a contribution.”
Find out more about research in sport, health and wellbeing at Loughborough University – and why it’s a gamechanger
