How about an Olympic games for enhanced athletes?

As a D1 athlete (track & cross-country), I've put a lot of thought into this sort of question. My conclusion is that sports are inherently unfair. This may sound like a strange thought coming from someone who has been running competitively for a good portion of my life, but I believe it is the truth.

People are born with a lot of genetic variation. I realize that no matter how hard I train, I will never run 5,000m in less than 13 minutes. It's not a matter of increasing dedication or anything like that -- it's simply getting the right genes. Even in high school and college, you see the people with the best genes rise to the top with significantly less effort.

So why would I participate in something that rewards luck? Because it's not entirely luck, and the further away from an elite athlete you are, the less luck matters. A high school runner with poor innate running ability can easily beat the most gifted runner by working hard and training correctly. It's because even those born with low potential have a huge range in which they can improve, before they begin reaching their genetic limit. In fact, I would argue that very few people ever come close to reaching their limit.

So I can appreciate that even though there is still an unfairness in how hard different athletes have to work to achieve the same goal, the goal that matters in competition (winning) is really determined by those who are the most dedicated and committed at the more local levels of a sport. (Of course, we could get into the debate that hard work and commitment are also genetic traits, in which case the whole thing becomes a crapshoot, but I'll leave that question for another time).

Now, elite athletes are nothing like normal people. Almost every single one of them has hit (or is very close to) their genetic limit. They're at a point where more, or different types of training just won't do anything. At that point, "winning" comes down to a genetic lottery. Which is kind of sad, because these people have spent their whole lives working for something where achieving it depends mostly on chance. I assume most of them either don't recognize this or (more likely) don't care. There is a third option though... recognizing this and fixing it. This is where drugs come in. My first thought is that these high performance drugs "fix" what was never fair to begin with. But the problem is that sports weren't designed this way. When these athletes began their decades of training, they recognized what the rules of the game were. Like a board game, there's some element of luck and some element of skill. And because they knew the rules of this game very well before they began competing, I can't condone anyone using drugs to make the game more fair, because the other competitors never agreed to this.

Simply put, it's cheating. And the majority of the world (at least for the moment) thinks cheating is immoral. So we should continue to ban athletes that don't play by the rules of the game, regardless of the fact that they are trying to make the game more fair for themselves.

What are the pitfalls to breaking these rules? You're cheating all of the other players in the game, who never agreed to let you break the rules. You're cheating the fans of the game. You're stealing money (highly competitive sports have large amounts of money involved for the winners).

Now, if somebody wants to create a new game, with new rules, by all means go ahead. I personally wouldn't take an interest in this manner of competing, but I'm sure there are many who would. And they would be doing it morally.

Just my thoughts.

So it'd be like motor racing -- stock and modified classes?

How would the modified classes be regulated, or would they? Would there be 100m stock, 100m GT and 100m Prototype, based on the types of enhancements and weight of the participant? Wow, imagine if the rules changed year to year. Like suppose you had folks in Prototype chopping off their noses to increase their power to weight ratios, and next year they increase the minimum weight and now you have to install ballast in your ass last minute to get your weight back up.

With the Olympics due to kick off on 27 July in London, this article takes a look at how far science would be able to push human athletic abilities if all restrictions on doping were lifted. The article mentions anabolic steroids (up to 38% increase in strength), IGF-1 (4% increase in sprinting capacity), EPO/blood doping (34% increase in stamina), gene doping and various drugs and supplements, as well as more 'extreme' measures such as surgery and prosthesis. Hugh Herr, a biomechanical engineer at MIT, says performance-enhancing technologies will one day demand an Olympics all their own. But is that time already upon us?

It's kind of disgusting to encourage people to fuck up their bodies to win an athletic competition.

A lot of the things you could do to yourself to help you run faster next year are not exactly going to improve your health. And children need role models.

I believe the powerlifting and bodybuilding organizations already have doped/undoped competitions. I have no idea to what extent cheating occurs.

Anyone have more info on this?

While insiders (and outsiders) are prone to quibble about specifics, I think most people understand and basically agree with arguments for anti enhancement rules.

Things start to get very fuzzy when/if previously banned enhancements start becoming common among non athletes. Hormone treatments to slow or reverse aging, aid recovery, improve body fat levels and such. If a drug can improve stamina in athletes, a milder dose will probably be a nice enhancement for ordinary people. If everyone is taking a drug that makes you more alert and patient, it's weird that athletes aren't allowed to take it. If everyone is doing anti aging hormone treatments to look 40 at 60, it seems ridiculous when a tennis players retires at 31 for want of those hormones.

Competing athletes will "abuse" these enhancements in the sense that they will go well beyond what doctors will recommend. But, you could say that doctors' recommendations take into account the median cost benefit considerations and athletes are at the extreme. In any case, athletes abuse their bodies in other ways. They train well past the optimal (in terms of health) levels. It's obviously not good for your head to get punched 500 times per week, but boxers do it.

Anyway, when your mother can toss a judo player into a second story window, watching the olympics will seem pretty quaint.

I would like to see an Olympic Games that make no assumption as to what the competitors are made of. A competition where robots are allowed to compete as much as humans. To avoid injuries to human athletes, you would probably have to limit it to sports where competitors don't interact with one another, but it would be interesting to see the evolution over the years as robots get better than humans.

I'd happily support a Mutant League. The games were really fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_League_Football

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutant_League_Hockey

Picture this, while regulars can't go down the 9s barrier in 100mts dash, in the powerlympics they would easily break that record year after year, all the records will fall like a house of cards bringing more enthusiasm, more money and more advertisement. What's not to like?

Soon ancient olympics will be forgotten.

Who knows what scientists might be able to develop that would have other uses if they could focus on doing it openly and safely.

We shouldn't kid ourselves that chemists aren't working on this stuff at the moment but they're having to focus on stopping detection as well as pure performance and have to conceal what they do (not the greatest way to advance science).

But surely the toughest thing is the atheletes. How can you really get informed consent for stuff which is going to be that far out on the bleeding edge, particularly from someone who, let's put this kindly, has a far greater focus on their physical than their mental development?

The All Drug Olympics SNL sketch is the first thing I think of for articles like this. http://www.hulu.com/watch/4090/

    > Bizarre - I submitted this 4 hours ago:
    > http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4265126
    -----

@urbanjunkie: I can't respond to you directly for some reason, but that item is marked as "[dead]" for me.

Paralympics basically are this, but you have to take one step back before you take two steps forward with enhancements:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralympic_Games

I think this is inevitable, when the body has a limit, people will look for ways to push those limits. Augmenting and enhancing the human body has to be considered and may end up being beneficial for other purposes. I prefer bionic myself ;)

Instantly reminded me of Amped, an excellent book.

http://boingboing.net/2012/06/07/amped-daniel-wilson.html

And people here don't think the most elite are already taking PED? cough cough Don't be so naive.

Allowing enhancements puts any athlete that doesn't want to screw up their body at a severe disadvantage.

The HBO show The Wire would refer to this as "keeping the devil down in the hole."

Here's your Augmented Olympics opening ceremonies, courtesy of Deus Ex.