In the last 5 years I’ve notices a few trends in gear.

Bikes:
More travel as the norm.
Longer top tubes – shorter stems – wider bars
29ers
Fatter tyres.

Snowboards:
Rocker
True Twins (though I believe a directional twin or directional is still better for all mountain use)

Skis:
Carving style ie shorter, more side cut wider.
Even a few coming out with rocker

Shoes:
Rocker (ie MBT/Sketchers shapeups)

What else?

Price = ^

I hear they’re making tennis rackets out of stuff other than wood as well, it’s all cheeting if you ask me.

You missed carbon off the list.

Football boots have generally got lighter. They also seems to have split into 2 types:
1. ultra light weight, thin uppers and very “feel” orientated.
2. power/swerve generating boots, often with rubber on the uppers

football boots with “blades” and not studs so that you have to replace the whole shoe when they wear out.
Enduro bikes getting Ally frames, lighter components, more powerful small capacity engines, bars still at 810, and still cheaper than a top end downhill bike 🙂

Skis:
Carving style ie shorter, more side cut wider.

This interests me… as I was looking at the sidecut and turn radius info on some new skis in a shop at the w/e
(possible thread hijack / new thread for the snow lovers)

I have a pair of “fat” skis. They are certainly easier to turn than my old “thin” skis…

… but I am not entirely convinced that they are any “better” ???

The current crop of fatties have deep sidecuts and typical turn radius in the order of 14m

IIRC the sidecut was much, much less on my old long thin skis, but the turn radius was somewhere in the order of 8-9m ??? (is that likely to be right??)

My memory tells me that edge grip on the old skinnies was also better – longer edges, more in contact with icy slopes due to less sidecut?

“Barefoot” running shoes
Compression socks/tights/tops/calf guards etc
Arm coolers 🙄 😆 (triathletes)

More high tech software used in design of boats/oars in rowing

Materials being refined (or use thereof)

But TBH much of it is just fine tuning rather than groundbreaking. Until some new wonder material comes along I don’t think we’ll be seeing a change from that.

Where there’s maybe significant room for change is in the use of electronics to analyse what you’re doing and therefore improve your own performance rather than the performance of the equipment itself, etc – eg the Fox app to properly set up suspension, for rowing, better analysis of boat movement, for golf, clubs with downloadable swing data and so on.

Tubeless seems a quite recent thing on mountain bikes. I’d never heard of it til I started mtb’ing a few years ago.

Treadmills are getting bigger to cope with increased demands for air travel.

Yea – some things more fine tuning – like what clubber said. And carbon is used to ‘improve the current design’ but not really a ‘radical change in design’

Things like snowboard rocker basically turns ‘traditional camber’ design completely on its head – but still works well.

Windsurfing boards.

Wide point forward, thin tails.
Widepoint back, fat tails.
– oh how the teardrop revolution worked ( idiots).
Widepoint to the middle, all sorts or widths.

Only waveboards have altered less dramatically than other kit.
I genuinely believe all this fannying around, let’s face it mostly to sell boards and kit, probably made the biggest contribution to the sports shrinkage after kitesurfing.

Anyway I’ve hung my sails up so I can ride my bike and watch it become “technically unfashionable” instead. 🙄

Interestingly I ride an nearly new surfboard, which is almost identical in shape and volume to a 1970 one I used to own.

Those square headed golf drivers were getting popular a few years back….

as well as rescue clubs & hybrids……

Diesel racing cars….

electric motors in F1 (KERS) and stuff like DRS

BTCC cars were completely shaken up this season (to get more manufacturers back on board, I think)…