Talk about legwork! I love it when RL has all the elements of good SR-- politics, human augmentation, bigotry, etc. The "purity of the sport" types scream Humanis to me.

and then there are those that call for a end to the no-drugs policy in sports, as its impossible to maintain anyways.

That makes a load of sense. "It's to hard to enforce so lets just forget about it".

until we see only those from the western world win because they have the best tech behind them. bye bye fair play...

or rather, make that level playing field...

...or the deepest pockets behind them.

Just look at George and his Yankees. Yeah they may be nowhere right now (as they usually are through a good part of the season), but come September there they are, right in the thick of things again.

The problem with this particular argument about "augmented athletes" is that the detractors don't really have facts backing up their opinions. The only criticism they have on their side is that prosthetics can artificially increase height, a problem which can be solved by enforcing restrictions on the length of prosthetics (which would have to be based on the runner's own natural height). I'm not saying it would be simple. But welcome to the 21st century. Institutions like the Olympics need to adapt to progress or ultimately become dinosaurs and die out.

Bah. By 2050 most sports will have their own cyber-only divisions anyway.

...Check out the description of NFL in Shadowbeat sometime. Makes Fox Sports'™ cyber styled graphics seem almost prophetic.

one interesting thing, those legs looks like they are a early version of the kid stealth ones

I'm sorry the guy doesn't have legs, and estatic he seems to be doing well without them. But does that mean he can compete in the Olympics? If he were blind and petitioned to become an aircraft pilot the answer would be no, regardless of any prosthetic enhancement.

The point? Everyone can't do everything no matter how hard you try.

he should be able to compete. just without the prosthetic legs.

unless the sport states something about needing feet. I remember there was a weight lifter, and for setting the bench press record you need to have your feet on the floor and he had no legs so he couldn't set it.

I think it was more absurd than that. Something about the gym laws being that you had to wear shoes. Since the guy didn't have feet (or legs) he had to leave.

...it's called IFR - Instrument Flight Rules. Part of the training when I was a student pilot required you to wear a hood which cut your peripheral vision so you would focus only on the instrument panel.

It doesn't sound like the fake legs give any real advantage. I'd say look into it, do some research. If it turns out they do give him an advantage, then don't let him run. If they don't give him an advantage, let him run.

..it states that they actually are a disadvantage, from a scientifical PoV.

And that some other athletes are alreaty getting biomods.

Makes me think of the SNL skit for an alternate version of the Olympics where there are no restrictions, all the drugs you can use. The skit then goes to say how many world records were broken in the first day alone. Then came the weight lifting part and the guys arms tear off. Silly SNL skit.

yeah but that sorta happened to a real guy. his muscles exploded.

hmm, anyone recall those red tinted contacts that some golfers have started to use?

also, i kinda recall one of them saying that the color was a social "advantage" as it made some competitors back of a bit so to speak

A couple of years ago, I wrote a letter to Popular Science when they had an article about this and it got published.

Simply put, my solution was to use motor sports as a model. Motor sports have different classes of competition: standard, modified and super-modified. Sports as they are now, could fall under the standard level. Modified would include steriods, oxygen treatments, etc. Super-modified would include gene therapy, massive steriods, bionics, and so on.

I summed up the letter by saying that this would not only provide for some interesting sport, but it would also provide a large number of willing guinea pigs to test all this new technology on.

It could have other interesting consquences, too. Imagine the pay the refer would demand being on a field surrounded by 400 pound muscle men pumped up on super steriods, gene therapy and aggression enhancing meds. Just imagine the hockey fights then.

Anyway, SR has generally followed this pattern. Some sport, like baseball, have little enhancement, while American football encourages the max amount. Canon used to have it that there were usually deaths in every football game and many per season. I'm not quite sure we are ready to go that far, yet.

sounds like that modern gladiator variant thats so popular on cable in the US to me...

same deal with formula 1.

they have outlawed some driver aid devices over time to make sure its the driver and not some computer that does the driving...

The problem with prosthetics is that they are relitively easy to quatify the properties and performance of, while the human body it not.

It is impossible to compare how one runner would run if he had real legs, thus you cannot substitute a prosthetic in its place and say they are equivalent; they aren't. An athlete, especially an olympic athelete, spend countless hours perfecting their body, forging it into as ideal a state as possible to perform highest in their particular sport.

Prosthetics, whether by choice or necessity, circumvent the purpose of sport. If a runner can no longer train his legs, or even run on them unassisted, he can no longer compare himself to other runners.

Comparing this to SR, as hobgoblin stated, "those legs looks like they are a early version of the kid stealth ones". The reason shadowrunners got the kid stealth legs was because they increased base running speed. Technology has the inherent ability to surpase what is humanly possible, and allowing technology to play a direct part in physical competition between human beings goes against what the olympics stand for.

It may make a great show to watch cybered athletes compete, but it is not prohuman, racist, or humanis like to try and preserve the ideals of sportsmanship.

(And yes, in SR, it is still not racist, prohuman, or humanis like)

Ultimate Fighting Championship?

And yeah, it's gladiatorial in most every aspect except the slavery.

sounds about right...