In this age of AIR Nike zero-drag Speedo suited sportsmen, it was most refreshing at the local inter-schools sports day to see a tiny barefoot Bedouin kid out run all the competition. He had no more than his naked desire to win and a lot of practise chasing camels. He was the man of the day. Running is a sport where equipment is excess to requirements. Swimming needs little else than a cover for one’s modesty and a free-climbers only requirements are to wear a bandana and call every one ‘Dude’. Other sports, however, have evolved in direct relationship to their equipment. Ranging from the simple Discuss of Athens to Heli ski-ing in the Alps, mans pursuit of sport has also involved his mechanical ingenuity.

I went for a ride in the desert with the Sharm Moto Club the other day. I haven’t been seriously off-road for 20 years. My oh my, how things have changed. Obviously one still needs a bike, and a helmet was always a good idea along with a stout pair of shoes. But, titanium stitched trousers ? Shock absorbing boots ? Body armour ? Should I be expecting people to shoot at me out there? I emerged from my bedroom 30 minutes later, looking and feeling like some post-modern desert warrior straight out of Mad Max. Almost every joint of my body was encased in a foam lined, light-weight, high impact, poly carbonate shell. I had shoulder protectors, a breastplate, elbow guards, an integral kidney belt, a flexible spine protector, I was bullet-proof.  I slipped a loose T shirt on top of the whole ensemble and WOW. Terminator 3. Eat dust ! I did have difficulty swinging my leg over the seat due to the bionic kneecaps, and my totally isolated Kevlar booted feet were so well protected from aggressive external forces that I wouldn’t have noticed had I stood on a small atomic explosion rather than the brake. However, there are some pretty jagged nasty looking rocks going past rather fast out there and, thanks to this gear, I reckon I could have bounced off the sharpest of them totally unharmed - apart from a damaged ego.

SCUBA Diving hasn’t always been so ‘equipment heavy’. I remember when all you needed to go for a dive was a tank and the biggest knife you could find. Mine was the size of a small sword and caused me to swim around in circles but at least I didn’t need to carry any extra weight. We wore fins made out of dustbin lids and hung toilet seats around our necks in some bizarre ritual associated with bearded, beer bellied men, tridents and Davy Jones. Those who touted the new-fangled balanced regs were considered a trifle avant guard, if not downright effeminate. If one had shown up with a big yellow box and sucked on a vacuum cleaner hose one would have been laughed out of the club. They still are, actually. To the uninitiated, the vast array of suits, fins, regs, BCD’s, computers et al is way beyond comprehension – and that’s simply recreational diving. For a technical diver, 4 tanks is the basic requirement. Any less and one would lose ones credibility, any more and it’s simply showing off. With all those tanks, slates, SMB’s, backup this and redundant that to carry, a scooter comes in quite handy too. Covering vast distances at depth with very little breathing going on, out into the deep blue yonder and back with barely a trace of effort. Vorsprung durch Technik. Makes dustbin lid fins seem almost archaic.