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Using technology for sporting achievement

by Simon Longstaff

Due to the extraordinary precision of electronic timing mechanisms, it is now possible to measure the performance of athletes within hundredths (perhaps thousandths) of a second. So it is that we can discern the smallest margins of difference in a contest – awarding victory based on differences in achievement that the human eye, unaided, cannot discern.

It is in this context that elite athletes have looked to technology to provide them with the winning edge.

For example, there is now discussion about the extent to which swimmers should be aided by wearing high-tech body suits – worn solely in order to wrest, from the water, the thinnest of margins for victory. If the same result was achieved by taking performance enhancing drugs, then the athlete would be labelled a ‘drug cheat’. But if the extra speed comes from a cleverly conceived material aid (high-tech cossies), then hardly an eyebrow will be raised. So, what are we to think of this?

The idea of fair play (if not the reality) is supposed to be found in the tradition of the Olympic Games. In ancient times, athletes would travel from the Greek city states to Olympia – competing in quasi-religious games designed to honour Zeus – whose temple and sanctuary dominated the venue. Athletes competed in the nude – at least in part to ensure fairness and for reasons of safety (eg. without clothes, no person could conceal a weapon).

However, there may also have been another, related reason for preferring nudity. In his dialogue the Gorgias, Plato has Socrates tell the story of how Zeus changed the conditions in which the dead were judged – so as to ensure greater fairness. Socrates relates how, in earlier times, people were judged prior to their death with the good being sent to the Islands of the Blessed and the bad to suffer torment in Tartarus. Unfortunately, the judges were being overawed by those vicious souls decked out in fine clothes and the trappings of wealth and power. So Zeus changed the system. First, he decreed that judgement be determined only after death. Second, he required that both judges and the judged be naked so that, “he with his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked souls”.

Again, the core idea at work here is that people be judged for whom they truly are – and that their fate not rest on what they wear, or other material benefits that they might be able to afford. One can see a pattern of thinking emerging here – especially given the connection between the ancient Olympic Games and Zeus.

Tracking forward to modern times, although some people might relish the idea of nude competitors, I am more than content to leave that thought alone. However, I wonder if the deeper point to be found in the ancient Greek approach might still have merit? Intuitively, it seems unfair that a superior athlete might lose a race simply because he or she could not afford to purchase the latest kit. The high-tech cossie is a case in point. There is no doubt that Australia has consistently produced some of the best swimmers in the world – people who could win, unaided, in most competitions. However, is winning what it is all about? Or does the manner of your victory also matter?

Unfortunately, too many nations (including our own) have linked a sense of their relative worth to their performance in sporting competitions. There’s not anything really wrong with this (far better to compete in the pool than on the field of battle). However, when issues of national prestige are included in an already heady mix of personal ambition, then the temptation to ‘tilt the table’ in your favour by outspending your rivals can be most seductive.

Perhaps this is a temptation we should resist. The development of new technology to aid performance in sport is not the problem. Rather, it is the unequal access to the results of innovation that can distort the results of competition – especially when the differences in personal performance are marginal.

Australia is a sporting nation. However, are we sporting enough to promote competition of a kind where it is the athletes who compete and not their technology?

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