From running tracks to football stadiums, from golf courses to the ocean waves, from snowboards to yoga blocks, cork is helping athletes around the world to surpass themselves and attain hitherto unimaginable goals.
Cork is an increasingly popular option for the latest generation sports flooring, thanks to its natural characteristics, enhanced by innovative technologies.
Cork is used in natural and synthetic football pitches, and offers added value as an exceptional material that can support athletes in their sports activities, increasing safety, comfort, hygiene, durability and sustainability.
In natural turf pitches, cork is the ideal material to protect players' joints due to its high absorption capacity, which reduces impact by up to 40%. AirFbr - a revolutionary technology that incorporates expanded cork granules – had its official premiere in the UEFA Euro 2016, in France.
In synthetic pitches, cork infills bring nature to artificial surfaces. Cork infills are 100% natural and a type of sustainable filling that exploits cork’s elasticity and high compression resistance, in order to offer a clean solution, that avoids injuries to players and guarantees their comfort. The use of cork infills makes it possible to reduce surface temperatures by up to 30%.
Modern flooring solutions based on agglomerated cork and recycled rubber are increasingly chosen for professional sports spaces. Gyms, sports centres and stadiums in several continents have adopted Corticeira Amorim’s solutions, which fully respond to their elasticity, resilience and durability requirements.
Cork’s natural characteristics, associated with rubber, enables greater resistance, comfort and safety during the practice of sporting or leisure activities. Applied as the final surface, they cushion the physical impact of the respective activities and are ideal for application such as running, fitness and aerobics tracks. They also deliver an excellent performance in ice rinks and areas subject to intensive use with heavy loads, such as weight rooms. The different available product ranges make it possible to choose from several solutions and a diverse palette of patterns and design possibilities, in line with each client’s specific decorative needs.
There is no doubt that cork is chosen by athletes who respond to the biggest challenges. When the challenge was to create a new surfboard, unlike anything ever made, Mercedes Benz developed, in partnership with Corticeira Amorim, a tow-in board made of cork, that achieved the perfect balance between weight, flexibility and speed.
It was specially designed so that Hawaiian surfer, Garrett McNamara, could surf the big waves in Nazaré, in safety and with his characteristic boldness. This surfboard is one of the highlights of a long partnership, that is enabling cork to reveal its full potential.
Cork is widely used in other water sports, such as windsurfing and stand-up paddle, since it is a light, waterproof, resistant and comfortable material.
Cork is also applied in various types of extreme sports equipment, since it offers lightness and flexibility, while maintaining the full emotion and adrenaline. One excellent example is the innovative snowboard, which incorporates cork, developed by the Swiss company Anticonf. Distinguished in the 2017 edition of the ISPO BRAND NEW awards, this new snowboard uses cork as a material that, together with its unique sustainability credentials, combines excellent technical-mechanical performance, extreme lightness and greater vibration absorption.
Skateboarders have also embraced the potential of cork, due to its extreme lightness and flexibility, and high vibration absorption capacity. The company, Archer, has combined cork with other materials, to develop cork skateboards that are as light and impact resistant as they are flexible, capable of ensuring a smooth path, gliding across the asphalt without producing any unwanted vibration.
Cork’s versatility in the sports segment encompasses a wide array of different sporting modalities, due to its impact absorption capacity, controlled resilience and lightness. It started to be applied in badminton shuttlecocks and soon began to be used in professional hockey, cricket and baseball balls, table tennis rackets, golf clubs, arrows and even in referee whistles.
Cork is also used in kayaks and has contributed to winning Olympic medals. Cork-based boards, which ride the waves from the USA to Australia, have also delivered good results for athletes such as Jason Blewitt, 3x Australian Champion longboarder.