Technology & Sports

There was a presentation today on sports & technology. I have always been an avid sports fan, and I find it inspiring when I see athletes push themselves to the limits, striving for excellence with every movement of their bodies. Technology has allowed these limits to be taken to a higher level. Athletes have to do less to achieve higher efficiency. Some might argue that this has taken away the true virtues of sports, or has undermined the value of hard training and passion for the game.

In the most recent Olympics games, an amazing technology was introduced in the swimming events. Speedo created a swimsuit that could reduce resistance and improve buoyancy. As a swimmer myself, these are the two aspects that can dramatically affect performance. In a sport where milliseconds are measured and could mean the difference between a gold medal and last place, you could say technology broke the 23 out of 25 world swimming records made that Olympics. Yet would you take away the medals from the athletes, who put in countless hours of training? The issue is, you wouldn’t know whether they deserve it more than the other, when they are not playing on the exact same playing field.

This is only one such example of the part technology has to play in sports. It varies widely from the shoes we wear (lighter? More cushioning?) to the tennis racket we use.  Technology, like it or not, has infiltrated the sports arena. It can make you swim faster, run further, jump higher… This is not to mention performance-enhancing supplements. These supplements are part and parcel of endurance events. In biking events, would lance Armstrong have achieved his success without a state of the art bike? Can you compare a tennis player that takes a power supplement before an event to the swimmer who wears the swimsuit in the example mentioned earlier?

The team that presented classified technology in sports as primary (game day) and secondary influence. However to me, it is hard to draw the line. There is no difference between an athlete who uses a lighter golf club to the swimmer who wears a high-tech swim suit, or even a body builder who takes a high efficient protein supplement before he starts training. The hard truth is that we are all playing on unequal playing fields today. And unless you want sports man to run naked, you cannot ban such technology in sports, unless it breaks the actual rules of the game. In the recent youth Olympics, there were 2 swimmers from the African continent that had never swam in a proper swimming pool before in their lives. Yet their presence in the games was surely appreciated, and it was heart warming to see them participating in the games competing with the other athletes who have trained in proper swimming pools their whole lives.

The beauty of sports in essence is that we are unequal beings; sport celebrates this diversity. If sports were fair in any sense, we should get robots to compete against each other. Technology is just an aid, which has definitely helped improve entertainment and enjoyment in sports. More importantly, it helps athletes do it in a healthier way. Technology in sports should be embraced; it already has too many effects on sportsman indirectly, to be controlled or strictly regulated.