For many, elite sport is the quintessence of human effort. It fuels fierce competition, earns unconditional tribal loyalty, and rewards winners with fame and fortune.
As the Olympic motto says, the limits of human capabilities are there to be tested – faster, higher, stronger. But what would occur if the boundaries weren’t simply pushed, but abandoned altogether?
That’s what the co-founder of PayPal said Peter Thiel he wants to do by paying some money to the lawyer Aron D’Souza concept “Improved games” where drug testing is out of the query and anything goes.
Will be enterprise capital make Enhanced Games a reality? Despite the rhetoric about making sports safer and the “medical and scientific process of lifting humanity to its full potential,” the Games are about earning profits.
The matter of reinforcement
The argument for an “improved” sport states that the current system is unfair and ineffective, as drug use is outwardly already common. It calls on athletes to make their very own body-strengthening decisions and reward their excellence a fairer share sports and entertainment loot.
The argument goes that because drug use in sports will proceed to be endemic, athletes ought to be allowed to reap the benefits of whatever advantages they’ll to ensure their success. In a world of hyper-commercial, spectacle-driven sports theater, athletes and fans alike are desperate to know what will be done when anything is feasible.
Costs for participants
As experts in sports governance and integrity, we now have several concerns about the proposed project.
This doesn’t mean that we are against “thinking outside the box” to shake up existing systems that are sometimes unjust and inequitable. We agree that more can all the time be done to reduce the damage done to the bodies of elite athletes.
However, any greater entertainment value will come at a price for participants. There is not any shortage of evidence that The dangers of overusing pharmaceuticals to enhance performancenot to mention what might occur when utilized in experimental combos and doses.
Let’s not pretend that this shall be some type of harm reduction strategy to combat the use of banned substances in sports, a bit like decriminalizing cannabis.
In the Enhanced Games, athletes could be rewarded for “excellence.” This signifies that the race for drugs, during which more is inevitably higher, is not going to be limited to drugs approved for human use.
What is sport for?
In addition to the harm done to athletes, there may be also harm to sports.
We’d like to think that the most engaged sports fans would like to watch athletes fairly than injectable avatars. But the event was designed as accessible fodder for consumers, not a treat for sports enthusiasts.
Enhanced Games suggests that the path to victory is thru what many sports fans would consider cheating. Instead of promoting success through perseverance, resilience, and labor, it suggests that there’s a “magic pill” or “silver bullet” for each challenge.
Even if we put aside the significant health risks posed by the open category of do-it sport (which still raises legal and medical ethical concerns), it undermines the very essence of what sport ought to be.
We could also be idealists, but what’s the point of sport in case you don’t a minimum of strive to be authentic? The most vital thing these games will “correct” are existing problems in elite sport.
More inequality and opportunities for exploitation
The idea behind Enhanced Games seems to be based on the assumption that every one participants are adults who could make fully informed decisions about their very own short-term goals and long-term health in a way that can impact only themselves. This is unlikely to reflect reality.
Elite sport is just not conducted on a level playing field. Access to money, knowledge, power and technology already gives some athletes a bonus over others, and the Enhanced Games will exacerbate these inequalities.
The Enhanced Games proposal doesn’t specify how the increased risks for commercially exploited athletes shall be managed. The Games are also proposed to include events during which the developing elite athletes are young and vulnerable, comparable to gymnastics and swimming, which could have serious consequences for these children and their caregivers.
Victory – but at what cost?
Sports have never been a win-at-all-costs solution. Sport ought to be a part of a society that cares about respect, fun, friendship, health, learning latest skills and vitality.
If only entrepreneurs and enterprise capitalists could focus their money and efforts on bringing the joy of sports to disadvantaged people and helping construct thriving communities.
We hope that in the years to come we’ll remember the Enhanced Games with the same fondness as sprinter Ben Johnson’s modern two-horse race in 1998. (Johnson, notorious for being banned from regular competition for all times after failing multiple drug tests, he was third.)
