About 10,500 athletes are competing at the Olympics in Paris over the next two weeks. And technology is playing a huge part in their training and their performance.
It's unbelievable what technological aids athletes have available to them. Every aspect of their performance and training is monitored, measured, and dissected to get the absolute last iota of advantage. In events like sprints where winning or losing is measured in hundredths of a second, the technology and how it's applied during training can spell the difference between a gold or silver medal.
Today's athletes also have access to technological advantages while performing. It's called "technological doping," and it has stirred enormous controversy in some sports because not all athletes have access to it.
In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 96% of gold medal swimmers wore a full-body suit made by Speedo. Scientific American reports that "Everything about this full-body suit—from fabric choice to seam placement—was carefully engineered to reduce drag force, which is created when water contacts the body."
When I was a competitive swimmer in the 1960s, preparing for a big race meant shaving my body from head to toe. In 2008, you just slipped on your Speedo full-body racing suit and flew to the finish line.
There were 23 new world records set at the Beijing Olympics and 93 set at the world championships in 2009. The full-body suit for men was banned shortly after.
Something similar is brewing today in track and field. A "super shoe" has been developed that will probably result in numerous records being broken.
What gives the wearer of the super-shoe such an advantage is its "lightweight, energy-returning midsole foam, a curved, rigid plate that spans the sole and a curved overall shape that naturally rolls a runner forward if they have enough momentum." If you've seen Oscar Pistorius run with his artificial leg, you can imagine the kind of advantage such a shoe could give a runner.
It was first used by marathon runners, but the concept has now been adapted for all distances.
These design elements work together to improve an athlete’s running economy, or the oxygen needed to travel a certain distance or run at a certain speed. Research has shown that the Nike Vaporfly shoe line improves running economy by 4 percent on average.
Super spikes are a form of super shoes adapted for shorter distances run on a track, and they will almost certainly be seen at this year’s Olympics. Researchers speculate that these shoes improve running economy by around 1.5 percent, but because it’s more difficult to accurately determine the metabolic energy required for sprinting, their exact advantage, if any, is currently unknown.
In 2020, World Athletics, the governing body for track and field events, released new guidelines trying to manage the huge leap in technology. World Athletics mandated that "super shoes should have a maximum heel height of 20 to 40 millimeters (depending on the event), contain no more than one rigid plate, and be available to the public for at least four months."
“We always respect the spirit of the rules for elite competition and do not create any running shoes that return more energy than the runner expends,” Nike told Scientific American. “At the same time, we pride ourselves on being disruptors and feel we have a responsibility to push the edges of innovation. When we do that, it creates a competitive response that elevates the entire industry and propels the future of sport forward.”
Does it really? If everyone is operating under the same restrictions and the same rules, that's one thing. But Nike shoes are superior to any other brand. And other runners can't use Nikes in competition unless Nike is sponsoring them.
The problem of technological doping is becoming critical as more and more equipment and apparel are engineered to give an athlete an advantage.
But the current approach to addressing technological doping can make the line separating “clean” and “dirty” sport blurry. Sock length is strictly regulated in cycling, but not in running. Springy carbon fiber is tightly regulated in running but welcomed in pole vaulting. Banned and legal shoes differ by millimeters of foam. These examples make regulations put forth by governing bodies appear arbitrary and not truly representative of the edge of fair sport.
“Elite sports performances are always a combination of biological capability and the training of that ability through technological means,” says Andy Miah, a professor at the University of Salford in England. “There is no natural athlete. In fact, [being an] elite athlete is a very unnatural way of life—but that doesn’t make it bad.”
Perhaps we should require Olympic athletes to compete as the ancient Greeks intended: naked.
