Comment by basseq | Hacker News Reader

Comment by basseq | Hacker News Reader

Whether through material science technology (shoes, swimsuits, rackets), medical advancements (supplements, techniques, steriods), and general knowledge (nutrition, training, form), sport is always advancing.

Other than devices that add energy from a stored reserve, like hidden motors in bicycles, I have a really hard time drawing a line of "cheating". Why were shark suits banned? [1] Why is blood doping to allow for quicker recovery "bad", but a finely calculated nutrition regimen to allow for quicker recovery de rigueur? Why are these fancy new shoes so egregious, when compared to races run 50 years ago, the current shoes are futuristic and unobtainable.

Excepting the most basic sports (running), every other sport is reliant on technology. So there's no way around advancement.

And I'm in favor of it! I want to see more awesome suits that blast world records out of the literal water. I want to see someone top 2:00:00 in a marathon. I want crazy new F1 cars with ideas no one's had before. Let's do it. That's more "human achievement" than some guy running really fast.

[1] "Because Michael Phelps complained." http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/25/why-ban-ful...

There's an interesting example from the most unlikely of sports - curling.

In 2015, Hardline Curling launched a radical new design of curling broom called the icePad. Their broom can alter ice with tremendous efficiency, allowing players to make previously impossible shots. Many players described the icePad broom as "like having a remote control for the stone".

Leading teams voluntarily agreed to a temporary moratorium on the new style of broom. Following an international summit on the issue, the decision was made to standardise on a single type of traditional broom fabric. The consensus was that the new broom technology had fundamentally changed the nature of the sport for the worse, diminishing the importance of skill and athleticism.

http://www.tsn.ca/inside-curling-s-broom-controversy-1.38105... http://www.worldcurling.org/ss2016-update

There's a big difference between shoes and blood doping. No athlete should have to jeopardize their health, e.g. death from blood clots, in order to be competitive.

Personally, I draw the line at what's readily available to all competitors without requiring them to compromise their health. So, I have no problem with runners taking moderate doses of caffeine before races - anyone can afford a cup of coffee - and I don't have an issue with shoes that are expensive but within the range prices of high-end running shoes, but I do have a problem with steroids and blood doping.

I think most elite athletes already jeopardize their health from too much physical activity. Consider traumatic brain injuries in the NFL or boxing or wearing out your knees from running on pavement for hundreds of miles. My friends and I talked about this once, we believe there should be two leagues - a standard league with rules and a no-limit league where you can dope as much as they want. They will push the limits of the human body and my bet is that our first mutants will come from this league.

> My friends and I talked about this once, we believe there should be two leagues - a standard league with rules and a no-limit league where you can dope as much as they want. They will push the limits of the human body and my bet is that our first mutants will come from this league.

Thing is strength sports have this already and no one who doesn't themselves compete is really beating down the doors to watch them. Powerlifting is divided into drug tested and untested, but is there a meaningful difference to the casual Sports Center viewer seeing a clip of a dude squatting 477.5kg drug tested in knee sleeves vs 485kg untested in knee wraps? MMA has grown in popularity as the UFC has gotten really serious about in- and out-of-competition testing. A coworker joked that he wanted to see cage fighting with an "anything goes" drug policy but we already had that a few years ago and he was watching the same amount of it then as now: 0. The NFL for all intents and purposes has no drug testing and it basically owns a whole day of the week for 40% of the year in the U.S., but if it ever gets serious about testing I don't think that would really detract from the spectacle of it all.

Point is: I used to think this too but I don't actually see much of value prop in doing this.

This is a side point, but the "knee damage" myth needs to be dispelled. The evidence does not support it and may even point the other way.

Do you have a source?

My own experience, as well as anecdotes from a lot of runners that I know, all confirm that running is very hard on the knees. Whenever I've had knee issues, the exercise that I have to cut out in order to make them go away is always running.

Or are you objecting to the "on pavement" bit? I don't really know whether that matters, I live in a city so all of my running is on pavement.

The studies [1] and [2] found no evidence of any adverse effects, rather the contrary (lower incidence of knee osteoarthritis in the running group). One possible explanation is that the runners were less likely to put on weight over the years, leading to lower day-to-day stresses on the knees.

[1] Eliza Chakravarty et al. "Long distance running and knee osteoarthritis: A prospective study," American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2008, 35(2), 133-138

[2] David Felson et al., "Effects of recreational physical activities on the development of knee osteoarthritis in older adults of different weights: The Framingham Study," Arthritis & Rheumatism, 2007, 57(1), 6-12

Thanks to the other poster for linking some studies. My comment draws from discussion with a leading researcher in the area as well as background awareness of research developments, but I don't know studies off the top of my head without doing a search.

The question of pavement vs soft surfaces is AFAIK open from an injury standpoint. Many people would expect that soft surfaces lower injury rates but I don't think we have evidence to support that.

There's also a difference, which may play a role, between short-term knee problems like runner's knee and underlying damage like osteoarthritis.

What follows is just my opinion/interpretation, but might be helpful. Knees in running are a bit like bearings in a car wheel. They don't generally go bad on their own (unless they are overloaded when not ready), but instead because of imbalanced forces around them, like mis-aligned wheels or tire tread wear. The knee has a lot of outside forces acting on it, mainly from the quadriceps and the IT bands, and if these forces aren't in harmony, they will pull on the knee and affect the way it tracks/moves. Since the knee has to move thousands of times over the course of a single run, a small imbalance can add up and cause injury. So a lot of times the fix lies in stretching or strengthening the quads and IT bands (e.g. I find sometimes that a knot in my quads can cause knee problems in running that go away soon once the knot is worked out).

I think most elite athletes already jeopardize their health from too much physical activity. Consider traumatic brain injuries in the NFL or boxing

NFL and Boxing are sports where brain injuries occur when doing the sport by the rules. I - and many others - think that is unacceptable, and in the NFL at least there seems to be at least a small amount of movement to improvement to this.

or wearing out your knees from running on pavement for hundreds of miles.

There's plenty of evidence showing this isn't really a thing. Humans evolved to run long distances and while modern high level sport is generally at a higher intensity this doesn't seem to cause "wearing out of knees".

OTOH, many "runners" (even healthy ones) are much much heavier than the weights we evolved at, and there does seem to be a link there.

If there is still a distinction between equipment and drugs, it's getting blurry.

Blood doping is exceptionally safe- like aspirin level safe.

What if there was a shoe insert that could fracture and destroy your foot? That would probably be less safe than blood doping.

Plus, professional athletes already compromise their health. From TBI in football (both kinds) to knee damage in professional runners, you have to admit there is a ton of grey area- and I believe most professional athletes already damage their body more through the 'unadulterated' pursuit of their sport than a regular one of us would through blood doping.

Huh, well, I will just construct an aid with wheels, let's call it bike and "run" circles around every marathon runner. Until somebody attaches a motor to that thing, then I have to borrow a race car...

You have to somehow say what is allowed and what not, otherwise there is no point at all in competing.

And the superhuman achievements of somebody "running really fast" on the basically same base rules that apply to everyone else is exactly what competitive sports is about.

Sports is ultimately about making the masses happy. It involves making it look so that the victory or loss is based on athlete's performance, and not on how good (and expensive) support the athlete has. So they have to ban things that are improving things too much beyond current average.

I don't like it, and it's one of the many reasons I'm not really into sports. I think there is a place for a different set of competitions - those, in which rules would not just allow, but encourage pushing the limits of technology. The bicycle race I'd love to watch would involve a electric-motor-propelled bike competing with a rocket-propelled one. Etc.

> Sports is ultimately about making the masses happy

That's an interesting assertion, but it's certainly not universally true.

How much sports rules should be for the people watching and how much should be for the people playing is a constant source of tension in the rules. It's also something that people tend to forget.

Even for the most popular sports the vast majority of competitions will be watched by almost nobody and engaged in for the pure joy of it. The rules need to take these people into account too!

Hadn't thought of that. Thanks!

  The bicycle race I'd love to watch would involve a 
  electric-motor-propelled bike...

You're looking for MotoGP. With rockets.

Start your alternative sports program. We'll see if it survives on the market. I don't want to watch it and I think few people do. On a forum populated by people who notoriously avoid sports it's no surprise people think this will work.

By the way, we can already complete a two hour marathon if any technology is allowed.

It's weird to me that you so casually conflate technical advancement with human advancement.

You don't see it as perverting some of the basic tenets of sport and competition to encourage rampant technical meddling in them? You honestly don't see where that road leads?

Personally, I see it leading to awesome technological inventions, and pretty cool advancements in everything from propulsion to material science to medicine.

But then again, for me, normal sport is boring.

Car companies only invest money into racing teams because lots of people watch, and people will only watch if the races are close and competitive. Anything that makes racing A) more expensive and B) less competitive will lead to less teams participating and less money being invested into R&D.

Finally, if we look at what happend back in the days when there where a lot less rules on race cars, the one thing you'll notice is that a lot of drivers died due to teams continually pushing the envelope beyond what was reasonably safe. The same thing with doping. Look at some of the women coming out of the Soviet doping programs of the 70s and 80s. They did not, as rule, live long and healthy lives.

There is a fairly interesting TED talk[1] on this subject by David Epstein that covers changing technology and better selection of body types optimized for individual body types, in the context of how records keep being beaten. There is a transcript available for skimming.

1: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_...

Well, if it turns out the technology is ludicrously expensive I think that can make a case for banning it. Otherwise only those who can afford the tech can win the races.

But isn't technology merely one aspect? I feel like it tends to be most visible.

Some athletes who garner millions in endorsements or part of highly developed countries that prioritize athletic programs can afford or have access to elite trainers, coaches, doctors, sport scientists, nutritionists/dietitians, and legal supplements that will provide them advantages over more amateur athletes.

Well, races like these are always only won by who can afford the tech.

Taken to the furthest extreme, everybody who can run successfully in these races can afford proper nutrition, airfare, clothing, and entry fees. There are plenty of people in the world who can't afford those things - should we disqualify everything in the name of "fairness"?

> everybody who can run successfully in these races can afford proper nutrition, airfare, clothing, and entry fees.

And the insane, nearly lifelong training.

Distance running is dominated by athletes from two extremely poor countries in east Africa. Cycling and triathlon are dominated by relatively wealthy European and American athletes. Running is fundamentally one of the most democratic sports; the IAAF are right to safeguard that democratic spirit.

> Running is fundamentally one of the most democratic sports

In what sense are you using the word democratic? In terms of low barriers to entry, or something else?

To take your statement at face value, running is decidedly not democratic, as the sport is dominated by 2 east African countries with a negligibly small proportion of the world's population.

For a truly democratic sport, at least 1/7 of the champions/finishers would have to be Chinese and another 1/7 Indian, as those are the two most populous countries in the world.

Democracy implies voting. Maybe the Chinese and Indians don't "vote" for running ;)

I am more in favor of getting back to as simple as we can in sports where people compete without motorized equipment. Standardize everything from shoes (no shoe running would be best) to everyone who needs equipment X pulls it randomly from the rack at the event start. you can even do this for clothing

competition to show who is the best should always be about the person and never about equipment.

Just curious — would you be okay if cycles used for marathon cycling had a battery that was discharged to begin with, but could be charged by pedal power during easy stretches and used during difficult stretches?

Yeah, this would be like complaining about pole vaulters' poles being made of increasingly better materials from hardwoods to composite materials, etc.

I think what it comes down to is that sport is of course primarily a vehicle to sell people things when they try to emulate professionals.

You can't sell a swim suit that breaks down after a few uses. You can't sell people on autologous blood transfusions. If it was about technology bike racers would all be using recumbent bikes, but that is not very popular with consumers.

It's a very finely tuned balance; enough advancement so you can keep selling new stuff, not enough to make it predominantly an absurd R&D game and obscure the human talent.

they often show videos of olympic gymnasts of the 1950s and say look at what they can do now! there is a lot more talent and training for sure, but they were also doing flips in dirt and today they bounce around on trampolines.

so many people think 4'+ Biles can jump 10 feet in the air. even the arena's have huge changes in tech

I agree with the ideea that a sport loses its meaning if the athlete is overshadowed by technological advances.

However, I'm not convinced by the argument that sports need to keep equipment palatable to amateurs. Consider Formula 1 racing: it's a popular spectator sport, despite the fact that an F1 car costs millions of dollars, which surely no regular Joe can afford.

> You can't sell people on autologous blood transfusions.

I'm pretty sure that you will be able to sell people on gene therapy that provides enhancement pretty soon.

The UCI banned recumbents because the upright bike manufacturers didn't want a faster bike to compete. People these days don't buy recumbents because they are very expensive due to being a low-volume niche item.

There is a good history of the recumbent ban by UCI in 1934 here:

http://www.helsinki.fi/~tlinden/winforb.html

There is no mention of bike manufacturers involved at all. Do you have a citation for your claim?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com