A little bit of history here. Around the mid-1970s it was discovered that if you used certain glues on the rubber you could get an increase in spin and speed. The initial "culprit" was supposedly Tibor Klampar of Hungary (the Wikipedia article is wrong, they were doing this in the 1970s already). The initial speed glue was "bicycle glue" - used to repair punctures. You had to apply a puddle of glue to the sponge, allow it to soak in for 10-15 minutes, causing the sponge side to expand and "dome" to form. There were all sorts of theories about this phenomenon - from the topsheet stretching, to gases collecting in the sponge pores - I think it was simply causing the rubber to expand, making it softer and more elastic, nothing really magic about it. You had to do this EVERY TIME BEFORE YOU STARTED PLAYING, and the effect would wear off in 2-3 hours (and it would be constantly decreasing over time), so you'd have to "glue up" your bat before playing, and you'd have to repeat the process every few hours during a tournament day. Rubber didn't last very long, and there was always the possibility of a "bad glue job" or the rubber coming off in the middle of play, but I digress. Eventually all the companies were selling "speed glue", which was simply regular glue thinned down to the consistency of water. You needed about 2 or 3 8 ounce cans to get through a month of playing, and it wasn't cheap (USD7-8 a can IIRC ca. 2000).
What happened was it caught on. BIG. Everyone (and I mean everyone, 1000 rated players and up) was gluing up, an "unglued" bat just didn't feel right. And kids were gluing up in the bleachers during tournaments. The solvents used in the speed glue stank - to increase the effect they added nasty stuff like chlorinated hydrocarbons and limonene (if you've ever smelt mosquito-repellent candles.. ugh..), some of this stuff, especially the halogenated hydrocarbons, were carcinogenic. So certain people raised concerns about it and the ITTF ended up banning the practice. As usual, whenever rules are concerned, the table tennis community broke up into opposing camps, some supported the ban, others didn't... but how to enforce it? The VOC (Volatile Organic Content) test. Which prompted the move to water-based glues. Because even Elmer's Rubber Cement would set off the VOC detectors unless you glued the rubber a couple weeks ago.
What did the ban achieve? I suppose it succeeded in clearing the air, so to speak - no longer did you have to breathe in carbon tetrachloride vapors while waiting your turn to play. But it had some unintended consequences. The first was the advent of "Speed Glue Effect" rubbers - which, out of the packet, replicated the speed, spin and feel (and some people say, sound, though to be honest, I've never been able to figure out what this sound IS) of glued rubbers, though they haven't managed to achieve it in full (supposedly speed-glued Bryce is still much faster and spinnier than the best Dignics) - all those expensive Japanese and German rubbers on the market are examples of this. And the side effect of this is that rubber prices have doubled and tripled compared to what they were before the ban. Another unintended consequence was the advent of "boosters" - the Chinese discovered you could use longer-chain hydrocarbons (i.e. oils) to achieve the same effect as speed glue - again, the effect wasn't as great, but it WOULD last weeks rather than 2-3 hours. AND they wouldn't set off the VOC alarms, AND they weren't (as) toxic since you wouldn't be breathing them in. Again, all sorts of mumbo jumbo ensued - some people just swore by Johnson's Baby Oil, some said you needed to buy this really expensive stuff from China that, supposedly, the Chinese National Team was using, some people had super-secret formulas they were making up themselves (check out posts on table tennis forums about 10-12 years ago). Again, concerns were raised - maybe some of these formulas contained toxic or carcinogenic substances, even if they weren't getting breathed in. My opinion (based on a GCMS based study commissioned by ITTF) is that most of the boosters on the market were simply long-chain n-alkanes - in other words, paraffin oils, and pretty innocuous. ITTF then passed a rule that made it illegal to modify rubbers, which technically means no boosting - the problem is, how to detect it? The VOC test won't work.
This is the current situation. Boosting is VERY common among certain players - mainly international level players from China, probably all the provincial level players as well as many club players, too, and players who were coached in China (including some from Japan) - they all use Hurricane 3 (sometimes special custom versions of Hurricane 3), which is supposedly unusable at that level of play without "an insane amount of boosting". There are rumors that some players boost, say, Tenergy 05, but supposedly when you boost these "glue effect rubbers" they become TOO fast and uncontrollable. In any case, what's the secret of these "glue effect" rubbers in the first place? Some say they've been BOOSTED AT THE FACTORY.
Note that the "glue effect" does wear off in 1-2 months and that it can be restored by boosting..
So boosting by the end user is TECHNICALLY illegal but is impossible to prove, and in fact, is
de rigueur among the top players in the world. But it's legal if done at the factory - any test that detects boosting at the user level will also detect boosting at the factory. And one should also mention that the vast majority of players (including everyone reading this) would NEVER ever have to have their bats go through Racket Control in any case, so there's no use worrying about it.
(Which brings us to Igor and his obsessions, but it's probably best to ignore him in any case...
)
Iskandar
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