Is Technology in Olympics a Form of Doping or a Reality of Modern Sport?
Technological doping refers to the use of equipment—from swimsuits to super shoes—that provides an unfair athletic advantage. But the boundaries of what is allowed are somewhat arbitrary
Today’s Olympic Games are a technological marvel. Slow-motion cameras play back the milliseconds-long difference between first and second place.
Wearable sensors detect clean hits in a bout of fencing or a round of tae kwon do.
Olympic athletes use motion tracking, microcurrents and lactic acid monitors to improve form, speed up recovery and prevent injuries.
Technology and sport are already inextricably linked, but controversy arises when that technology is used to enhance athletic performance.
Sometimes called “technological doping,” this phenomenon refers to the use of apparel or equipment to gain an unfair competitive advantage.
This year’s Olympic Games in Paris, for instance, will be a proving ground for “super spikes,” a version of the popular long-distance super shoes that has been adapted for sprinting. Sportsmanship purists say that these shoes constitute a form of technological doping.
Unlike drug doping, which is monitored by an international antidoping agency, legal apparel and equipment for a given sport is decided by its own governing body.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency told Scientific American that conventional doping and technological doping are independent issues, and that “it’s up to the governing sport bodies to put in place technical requirements for equipment use in their sport and enforce these requirements.”
But there’s no standardized rubric across sports to disqualify an item based on its degree of enhancement, cost or exclusivity. Consequently, decisions to ban an item from competition are often made retroactively.
For example, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 94 percent of all swimming gold medals were won by athletes wearing the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit.
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. In physics, the power a person needs to overcome a drag force is related to the cube of their speed, meaning that a swimmer would have to spend 33 percent more energy just to become 10 percent faster.
While the suit’s shark-skin-inspired fabric was thought to play a big role in drag reduction, later research found this not to be the case. Instead it’s likely that the suit’s full-body coverage reduces drag and makes energy expenditure more efficient by minimizing muscle vibration and smoothing skin texture.
The LZR Racer was worn by people who set 23 new swimming world records at the 2008 Olympics, a number that had climbed to 93 by August 2009.
Many people labeled it as a form of technological doping, and World Aquatics (formerly known as the International Amateur Swimming Federation, or FINA), the governing body for water sports, ultimately banned full-body swimsuits from competition.
Now men’s swimsuits can only span from the waist to the knee. Speedo did not respond to a request for comment.
The running equivalent of the LZR Racer swimsuit entered the spotlight in 2019, when a bespoke shoe created by Nike for Kenyan distance runner Eliud Kipchoge helped him achieve a record-breaking, albeit unofficial, sub-two-hour marathon.
Like the LZR Racer, the commercial versions of this super shoe—the Nike Alphafly and Vaporfly—led to a slew of new long-distance running world records.
According to Kim Hébert-Losier, a biomechanics researcher at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, technologically advanced super shoes are characterized by three main features: a 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.
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.
Athletes that take the time to try different super shoes may have a lot to gain. When Hébert-Losier tested the effect of Nike Vaporfly 4% shoes on recreational runners, she found that while running economy improved by four percent on average, the individual response was highly variable. “We had some people that were getting a 10 percent benefit,” Hébert-Losier says.
In response to these super shoes, World Athletics, the governing body for track and field events, released new guidelines on acceptable running shoes ahead of the 2020 Olympics. Updated rules stated 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.
“The 40-millimeter heel height was put in place because it limits the space that you can engineer into,” Hébert-Losier says. More space would allow for more energy-returning foam and rigid plates and would effectively lengthen athletes’ legs—all of which could confer an advantage.
But the line was somewhat arbitrarily drawn; there isn’t any magical performance enhancement that happens at a 41-mm heel height, Hébert-Losier says.
As it happened, an existing Vaporfly model—sporting a 40-mm heel height exactly—just passed specifications, and a compliant model of the Alphafly soon followed. This gave Nike a distinct advantage over other activewear brands, both in the running shoe patent space and in the upcoming Olympic Games.
“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.”
Other brands have now had ample time to release their own super shoes ahead of this year’s Olympics, but some research suggests these shoes still don’t improve performance as much as the Nike Vaporflys. All else equal, a Nike-sponsored athlete may beat a non-Nike athlete simply because of shoe choice.
Andy Miah, a professor at the University of Salford in England who researches the biomedical, cultural, political and social structures of the Olympic Games, believes this technological race comes with the territory of elite sport.
“Claiming the patent podium will be a really smart strategy of any elite sports team,” Miah says, referring to the strategy of deliberately partnering with a winning shoe brand. “Technologies allow athletes to produce their best results, and the smart teams will make sure they’re on top of this.”
For athletes who aren’t sponsored, training in super shoes of any kind quickly becomes expensive because they deteriorate much faster than standard running shoes. Experts recommend replacing a super shoe every 450 kilometers (280 miles)—and at upward of $250 a pair, that cost quickly adds up.
Yet for some athletes, the glory of gold is still too enticing. “Leading up to the [2020] Olympics, some runners basically chose to drop their sponsorship [with another brand] so that they could run in Nike shoes,” Hébert-Losier says.
Disparities in access to the best equipment, coaches and facilities have historically been one of the biggest sources of inequality in elite sport. Technological doping feeds this inequity because brand exclusivity and high cost restrict access to advanced apparel.
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.
According to Miah, it may be a fruitless endeavor to resist the integration of technology into elite athletics. “Elite sports performances are always a combination of biological capability and the training of that ability through technological means,” he says.
“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.”
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Wisenox
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I know it was probably irritating to anyone attempting to follow my babble about number theory. For that, sorry.
Here’s a snapshot of what I was seeing. I am posting a link, so if a pic shows, apologies for the size.
Feel free to beat it up, criticize, etc… I am proud of what I have done so far, largely because I started with a 9×9 number grid and only studied the behavior of number.
https://gitlab.com/perelax/src_imgs/-/blob/dc0fb94070156ac673aaaae51aa2b09664d20ee1/Excerpts/angle_of_propagation.png
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Herb Rose
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Hi Wisenox,
The problem with your number theory is that it is based on the garbage known as physics and has no connection to reality.
The signal we receive from the Voyager satellite gets weaker (loses energy) as it get further away. The frequency and wavelength remain the same (so much for Planck’s energy being a function of frequency) as do the mass (0) and velocity (c).(so much for the photon and constant speed of light). If energy cannot be created or destroyed what has happened to the energy if it is not a function of mass, speed, frequency, or wavelength?
The accepted solution to this problem is to give the ignorance a name and call it knowledge, just as was done with the “Photon” and neutrino. I think an appropriate name for this disappearing energy would be phlogiston.
Herb
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Wisenox
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Doesn’t disappear.
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Wisenox
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There’s more to it Herb. I appreciate the input, sincerely. Having more aspects to consider is welcome. The energy isn’t lost, it travels stable rings while rotating, seemingly.
What we observe as diameter, is here the behavior of ratio between energy in and circles filled.
Light is polarized and the 186 is key to alignment with Planck’s .
For right now, it’s ok for some holes, but I think it has legs. It is a visualization.
You aren’t curious how someone arrives at that just from numbers?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Wisenox,
Light disappears when the energy it has is absorbed by matter and then energy becomes a part of that object (internal or radiated). Until that happens it will continue to travel through space but in arcs not circles.
When light leaves a source its strength declines as the strength of the energy field it is in declines. When it enters a new energy field it will gain strength as it converges in the increase density of that energy field (magnifying glass). This produces change in directions (refraction).
We hear a lot about the red and blue shift of light coming from distant stars but not much about the blurring of spectral lines, where there are both red and blue shifts. This blurring occurs as light changes speed as it passes through different energy fields and the different time it travels through those fields cause different amounts of shift. Light with large blurring have traveled through the fields in the universe many times before being absorbed by matter. Light is a wave, not a particle, and a disturbance in the energy field radiated by matter. Energy doesn’t disappear, the amplitude of the disturbance changes until that disturbance is absorbed by matter. It does not have a constant speed but its speed changes as the strength (density) of the energy field it is in changes.
I envy your gift with math which is something I don’t have. I do believe that there are more irrational numbers than real numbers and the universe contains more irrational numbers. I don’t see how you can take 2 irrational. numbers, pi and psi, and get a rational number or constant.
Herb
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Herb Rose
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Hi Wisenox,
I relied earlier but misspelled my name so it disappeared.
A radio wave needs the appropriate length antenna to be absorbed. Since space contains atomic hydrogen which will not absorb radio waves, so the signals is disappearing. Actually it is being absorbed by the energy field which absorbs all wavelengths. Ever wonder why it is the longest wavelength, with the least energy that travel the furthest through space why the higher energy visible spectrum disappears?
Light is not traveling in circles but arcs as the disturbance passes from the energy field coming from one source to another energy source coming from a different source. Its strength and speed decreases as the energy field decreases (red shift). When it enters another energy field its strength and speed will increase as the energy field becomes denser (blue shift). As it changes speed it refracts forming arcs causing it to change direction. The disturbance will continue to travel through the universe until it is absorbed by matter becoming part of its energy field. The reason spectral lines blur is because the blue and red shifts have different duration in different fields.
One thing Einstein got right was the movement of the source light has no effect on disturbance because the wave is controlled by the energy and matter fields it travels in.
I wish I had your gift for math but I don’t. I have to look at evidence and reason for supporting theory. If the speed of light is constant and any change in time must have a corresponding change in distance, how can the increase in gravity, as you get nearer a center of gravity, cause the distance to the center f gravity to increase?
Herb
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Howdy
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Formula one is ruined by all this crap, to the extent it’s like watching disconnected rail carriages following each other round the track. Get back to the basic point that driver skill and vehicle control determines all.
All sports should include stringent standards to remove any discrepancy. If that means standardized apparel, then so be it. The athlete ability is the critical focus, not the win. To win by having help is to not win at all.
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VOWG
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I agree, “drawers cotton” and tee shirts for all.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Wisenox and Howdy,
You two and many others offer no evidence of the time and effort the athletes, who have qualified to participate in the Olympic Games, have made.
Have a good day
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Wisenox
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I have not commented on the olympics anywhere, nor the athletes.
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Howdy
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Back with a bang eh ,Jerry? Little changes in the ‘scientist’ world does it…
Moot point Jerry. These athletes accept items that aid their times, so no need to discuss it.
Though while we’re on the subject, you like observation, so why don’t you undertake observations of athletes past and present, including what they were wearing at each event, then inform us all of the outcome, if you can be bothered to do anything but expect others to do things for you that you yourself cannot possibly undertake.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy,
I believe I have read that the first athletes wore nothing more than their BIRTHDAY SUIITS.
Have a good day
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Jerry Krause
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forgot to ask:. Why did you comment about this article?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Howdy and Wisenox,
For months I have been searching for the case of the controversial dirty snowballs first observed by physicists at the U of Iowa. I just discovered this link
(http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/blackspot.html) and want to make it a matter of record here at PSI. Later I will make comments about the discovery of these dirty snowballs which seem to have been buried by most all of the scientific community because it doesn’t support the accepted incomplete, if not wrong, SCIENCE which still exists.
Have a good day
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Wisenox
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I’ve never heard of ‘dirty snowballs’.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Wisenox,
Since you have never heard of dirty snowballs does that mean (is evidence) that they don’t exist?
Have a good day
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VOWG
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Professional baseball still uses a ball design that has been used for decades and hardwood bats. It can’t be that difficult to set parameters for other sports.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi VOWG,
What is your excuse for not commenting about (http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/blackspot.html)?
Have a good day
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