I am no longer the girl who used to
follow sports avidly like the back of her hand (mostly cricket, I must
confess). Now, I enjoy playing them every now and then, which is very
different from the teenage-me who used to love running and jumping with
the boys. But that is pretty much where my interest is limited to. But
then, even a person like me, cannot remain unaffected by a phenomena
like the Olympics. It is the world's biggest sporting arena and it comes
with its share of hype, history and controversy. These athletes
epitomize all that we humans are physically capable of -
with their power, strength, speed, determination and rigor, they open
our eyes to what our mind and body are capable of. They represent all
the majesty that we as a race give ourselves credit for.
But my interest in the event, at least in the form of this post was elicited by a series of articles which were published in Nature's recent issue about the role of science in the current Olympics and in improving the limits of human performance.
When you think about it, it is not difficult to understand how and
why science has a big role to play in present day sports. As specialists
and athletes dissect sports, their performances and their scope of
improvement, they are constantly approaching the wall of human potential
- the absolute physical limits of the human body. Our bodies, despite
their brilliant 'design' and adaptability are capable of only so much.
We cannot sprint at more than a certain speed and and for longer that a
certain time. Usain Bolt established a world record by completing a 100
mt dash at speeds just shy of 28 mph and though recent calculations
suggest the theoretical speed limit for humans to be in the range of 40
mph; we are a good distance away from achieving that. And the main point
still remains that there is an actual limit to what the human body can
do. We are, after all, mortals of flesh and blood and the body can
endure only so much before it collapses. An understanding of this wall
of human performance is vital because when dealing with extreme sports
and athletics, one needs to know how much one can actually improve
without hitting that physiological wall. The graphs below show the
winning times of men and women in the Boston Marathon over several
decades. As can be seen from the winning times, there has been a steady
decline (the men exhibited the decline phase in the decades before the
1970s and the women caught up later) and then a flattening of the
winning times for both men and women suggesting that humans as a race
are very close to the right wall of human performance. Another fact that
is evident from this graph is that the performance improvements despite
dramatic changes in our diet, social structure, life span etc are of
the order of a couple of minutes at best. Now that we are so close to
the absolute limits of human physique, these time intervals will only
get closer and narrower and a milisecond could make or break the future
of an athlete who has been training for over 4 years for this one
event.
(This graph is obtained from SJ Gould's "Full house" for illustrating the implication of the right wall)
Now, I hope you agree that there is indeed a right wall or a limit to human performance and we are fast approaching it, if not already there. We now need to consider how we can push the wall an an inch or two away. This is where science and scientists have a constant role to play.
In order to push the performance barrier further and further to the right, we need to understand the exact dynamics and physics of the action involved. It is clear that sprinters generate their power by the force of their legs hitting the ground and this is best achieved with legs at a particular angle. We now know that bikes are best ridden when the drag is reduced and all sources of wind resistance from the bike and the biker are minimized. Such an understanding of the motion itself is enabled by scientific understanding of the action in question and by sensitive and sophisticated instruments that accurately measure the variables involved. Thanks to these technological and scientific advancements in addition to greater understanding of human health, nutrition and diet, performances in the Olympics have improved from the earlier years. But, that cannot be expected for very long.
Being an athlete is no mean feat today where in large parts of the world our lifestyles are predominantly sedentary - sitting in front of screens of all shapes and sizes. And in the rest of the world, where manual labour is the key to livelihood, the people are barely able to afford two square meals let alone the well balanced diets and dietary supplements that are the key to good stamina and strength. The kind of strength and endurance that the Olympics needs requires dedicated training without a break for years on end and this is no mean feat; especially in a world where either technological indulgence or poverty are forcing you to be anything but athletic. Also training for a sport at this level is not inexpensive by any means - even in developed nations. The investment of time, energy, finances all together mean that one does stake all when one walks on to the arena. And with that feeling at the back of their mind and with the knowledge that one millisecond is all it takes for them to make or break their life, who do you think will not like a little edge. Something a little extra to make them do "just a little bit" better than the guy next door.
But then where do you draw the line ?
Think about it for a second.
What
is legitimate and what is not ? Because everything from your diet, to
your genetics can play a role. Your sporting gear and your training
equipment can determine a lot too.
How much of an advantage can one permit..? What is legal and what is not ?
Of course, people from the western world have better access to proteins, diet and resources than the people from developing or under developed nations. While recreation is the primary purpose of sports in the western world, in developing countries, success in the Olympics hold the key to better survival - better jobs, better diet, house, money, etc etc. While people in developed countries can afford more food than they can consume, the rest of the world has to pinch pennies to make an existence. They have to save manically, work double shifts and compromise for a lifetime to be able to afford even some semblance of a training regime. Isn't that an unfair advantage then to the people from affluent countries ? While people in Kenya and Jamaica, eat roots and corn and run barefoot on their hills, people in UK and US train in temperature controlled, traction controlled environments with constant monitoring of their diet and fluid intake.
What about any genetic advantages that you inherit naturally - not necessarily by gene doping, although that may not be far too. There are plenty of natural mutations which an athlete could wish for - Mutations in the erythropoietin receptor or mutations that disable myostatin. For example, a Finnish cross-country skier Eero Mantyranta, won three gold medals in the early 1960s and was later found to have a mutation that made his body's erythropoietin receptors more efficient. (For the unfamiliar, Erythropoietin or EPO is a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells that normally carry oxygen bound to hemoglobin in our body.) Now you can imagine, how this simple mutation can improve your performance because more oxygen would translate into less fatigue and thus greater performance. Or as another example, what of the toddler who had mutations that disabled myostatin and thus had the physique of a wrestler. Now, if these people with natural mutations are permitted, why declare doping with EPO illegal for all other athletes. Now, I am no more in favor of doping with illegal substances than you are but the point I am trying to highlight is that the field is already uneven and there has to be an attempt to neutralize these kind of subtle but salient advantages. The current Olympics committee does follow a strong commitment to remove these kind of power pills and stimulants from the arena, but for how long? And is the field level in all other ways for these things alone to make an impact? Further, while a number of these so called power pills or stimulants are banned and can be detected from body fluids, there are quite a few that cannot be detected by our current tests and there are a good number that are permitted. One example is Creatine which is a commonly available supplement that contributes to the synthesis of ATP and has been seen to boost performance by upto 8%. There is also the possibility of blood transfusion which cannot be detected very readily but can boost performance. So, what distinguishes EPO, testosterone or corticoids from creatine such that one is permissible and others are not ?
What of sports gear and training equipment ? They too cause an imbalance in performance. In the current scenario, every tiny bit of modification can alter performance enough for it to make a significant impact. From lighter bicycles to swimsuits with lesser drag, to better, more ergonomic shoes - they all play a role. At the recent Beijing Olympics, athletes smashed 25 world records in swimming, more than in any other sport. The credit was given to high-tech swimsuits, which cut down on the drag. But after Beijing, the international body that governs competitive swimming introduced rules that limited the advantage that could be gained from swimsuits, leaving athletes looking for other ways to gain an edge. Some turned to researchers of fluid dynamics. But the fact still remains that anything from a swim suit to a shoe could make or break your chances in the Olympics and there are no ways to regulate these disparities. I recently read about the training programme of kenyan sprinters in the highlands above the Great Rift Valley. Kenya, as we all know is a country in the throes of poverty and internal conflicts. Excellence in sports is a sure way for a few to escape the grasp of poverty and to make something of their life. The sole motivation of money has spurred on many young Kenyans to turn towards sprinting. Running up the hills surrounding the Great Rift valley for miles on end, these children build up tremendous stamina and endurance. Living and running at high altitudes (8000 ft) further strengthens their muscles, improves the oxygen carrying capacity of the muscles and gives them an edge. Now, would you deem all these unfair advantages ? They lack the economic advantages of a developed country but they are blessed with other advantages by virtue of their geography. Sprinters from countries like Jamaica (Usain Bolt is from Jamaica) have also been considered to be genetically endowed with body structure that enables better posture in sprinting. Although, searching for a gene island that makes you a better runner has so far been non-productive, it is not entirely difficult to imagine. People from different regions and races are adapted differently and this might aid them or hinder them in the pursuit of that precious Olympic Gold. But disparities such as these are not what can be easily determined or avoided.
Drugs are also not the only way to enhance performance. Surgery and technological augmentation could also take athletes closer to the coveted podium spots. According to a recent Nature Report, baseball pitchers who have undergone surgery to replace a damaged elbow ligament with tissue from hamstring or forearm tendon claim that they can throw harder after a two year rehabilitation process. This could be true for other sports true. Is that to be considered true for any sport ? Major advancements in engineering skin, joints, muscle, tendons and ligaments are being made even as we speak to repair damaged tissue and to improve existing ones. Can we detect them? If yes, will they be disallowed ? Where is that line of what is permissible and what not ? I raise this issue only because of the current decision of the Olympic committee with respect to the participation of Oscar Pistorius from South Africa. I am sure you know that Oscar is an amputee who uses cheetah style legs and amazingly runs with them. He is the Paralympic gold medalist and was approved to run in the 2012 Olympics. To me, it is a triumph of human spirit and vindicates all that the Olympics stands for. But on the other hand, his current artificial limbs are lighter and allow greater bounce and power to be derived upon impact than our limbs of flesh and blood. Would it be that Oscar would be deemed to have an unfair advantage over the rest ? These are all controversial issues and I am not even sure if there can be a perfect solution for all these concerns.
But it does make me wonder, that with all these inequalities and discrepancies built into the system, how does one justify the ban on a lot of performance enhancing drugs and supplements ? Once again, I do not support the use of steroids and EPO to improve athletic performance. The Olympics have evolved to represent the epitome of human spirit - our abilities and excellence. And, any form of cheating with that concept by corruption, deceit, smuggling or doping will destroy everything good that the Olympics stands for. But, at the same time, we should aim to achieve a level playing field for all, in the truest sense of the word.
Is there a perfect solution to this ? Perhaps not.
I could hazard mentioning a possibility to minimize the disparities but I know that it is an impossible scenario but that is all I can come up with. Ideally, I would think that to ensure complete fairness, all competing athletes must be given equal training, diet, supplements, resources, and other benefits for up to one year (in one common location - call it the Olympics island ;)) before the actual event. This should level the playing field for all practical purposes, the inherited genetic contributions would have to be neglected of course and this should also enable closer monitoring of substance abuse by the competing participants. While it would help to do things this way, it would also cause great inconvenience to athletes and their families in addition to being a bureaucratic nightmare for the participating countries to take care of the finances and logistics of the whole thing. I doubt it would ever happen. But, it is under conditions as stringent as these, that I would say that the games are a level playing field. But for now, from what I see, it is an arms race to better your chances at the games and not everyone is given the same weapon. It is definitely a test of human ability, spirit and endurance but not a fair test.
And given the nature of advancements that are being made, I am tempted to believe the quote from Hugh Herr at MIT in the recent issue of Nature that "performance-enhancing technologies will advance to a point that they will not only extend human limits, they will demand an Olympics of their own."
Of course, people from the western world have better access to proteins, diet and resources than the people from developing or under developed nations. While recreation is the primary purpose of sports in the western world, in developing countries, success in the Olympics hold the key to better survival - better jobs, better diet, house, money, etc etc. While people in developed countries can afford more food than they can consume, the rest of the world has to pinch pennies to make an existence. They have to save manically, work double shifts and compromise for a lifetime to be able to afford even some semblance of a training regime. Isn't that an unfair advantage then to the people from affluent countries ? While people in Kenya and Jamaica, eat roots and corn and run barefoot on their hills, people in UK and US train in temperature controlled, traction controlled environments with constant monitoring of their diet and fluid intake.
What about any genetic advantages that you inherit naturally - not necessarily by gene doping, although that may not be far too. There are plenty of natural mutations which an athlete could wish for - Mutations in the erythropoietin receptor or mutations that disable myostatin. For example, a Finnish cross-country skier Eero Mantyranta, won three gold medals in the early 1960s and was later found to have a mutation that made his body's erythropoietin receptors more efficient. (For the unfamiliar, Erythropoietin or EPO is a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells that normally carry oxygen bound to hemoglobin in our body.) Now you can imagine, how this simple mutation can improve your performance because more oxygen would translate into less fatigue and thus greater performance. Or as another example, what of the toddler who had mutations that disabled myostatin and thus had the physique of a wrestler. Now, if these people with natural mutations are permitted, why declare doping with EPO illegal for all other athletes. Now, I am no more in favor of doping with illegal substances than you are but the point I am trying to highlight is that the field is already uneven and there has to be an attempt to neutralize these kind of subtle but salient advantages. The current Olympics committee does follow a strong commitment to remove these kind of power pills and stimulants from the arena, but for how long? And is the field level in all other ways for these things alone to make an impact? Further, while a number of these so called power pills or stimulants are banned and can be detected from body fluids, there are quite a few that cannot be detected by our current tests and there are a good number that are permitted. One example is Creatine which is a commonly available supplement that contributes to the synthesis of ATP and has been seen to boost performance by upto 8%. There is also the possibility of blood transfusion which cannot be detected very readily but can boost performance. So, what distinguishes EPO, testosterone or corticoids from creatine such that one is permissible and others are not ?
What of sports gear and training equipment ? They too cause an imbalance in performance. In the current scenario, every tiny bit of modification can alter performance enough for it to make a significant impact. From lighter bicycles to swimsuits with lesser drag, to better, more ergonomic shoes - they all play a role. At the recent Beijing Olympics, athletes smashed 25 world records in swimming, more than in any other sport. The credit was given to high-tech swimsuits, which cut down on the drag. But after Beijing, the international body that governs competitive swimming introduced rules that limited the advantage that could be gained from swimsuits, leaving athletes looking for other ways to gain an edge. Some turned to researchers of fluid dynamics. But the fact still remains that anything from a swim suit to a shoe could make or break your chances in the Olympics and there are no ways to regulate these disparities. I recently read about the training programme of kenyan sprinters in the highlands above the Great Rift Valley. Kenya, as we all know is a country in the throes of poverty and internal conflicts. Excellence in sports is a sure way for a few to escape the grasp of poverty and to make something of their life. The sole motivation of money has spurred on many young Kenyans to turn towards sprinting. Running up the hills surrounding the Great Rift valley for miles on end, these children build up tremendous stamina and endurance. Living and running at high altitudes (8000 ft) further strengthens their muscles, improves the oxygen carrying capacity of the muscles and gives them an edge. Now, would you deem all these unfair advantages ? They lack the economic advantages of a developed country but they are blessed with other advantages by virtue of their geography. Sprinters from countries like Jamaica (Usain Bolt is from Jamaica) have also been considered to be genetically endowed with body structure that enables better posture in sprinting. Although, searching for a gene island that makes you a better runner has so far been non-productive, it is not entirely difficult to imagine. People from different regions and races are adapted differently and this might aid them or hinder them in the pursuit of that precious Olympic Gold. But disparities such as these are not what can be easily determined or avoided.
Drugs are also not the only way to enhance performance. Surgery and technological augmentation could also take athletes closer to the coveted podium spots. According to a recent Nature Report, baseball pitchers who have undergone surgery to replace a damaged elbow ligament with tissue from hamstring or forearm tendon claim that they can throw harder after a two year rehabilitation process. This could be true for other sports true. Is that to be considered true for any sport ? Major advancements in engineering skin, joints, muscle, tendons and ligaments are being made even as we speak to repair damaged tissue and to improve existing ones. Can we detect them? If yes, will they be disallowed ? Where is that line of what is permissible and what not ? I raise this issue only because of the current decision of the Olympic committee with respect to the participation of Oscar Pistorius from South Africa. I am sure you know that Oscar is an amputee who uses cheetah style legs and amazingly runs with them. He is the Paralympic gold medalist and was approved to run in the 2012 Olympics. To me, it is a triumph of human spirit and vindicates all that the Olympics stands for. But on the other hand, his current artificial limbs are lighter and allow greater bounce and power to be derived upon impact than our limbs of flesh and blood. Would it be that Oscar would be deemed to have an unfair advantage over the rest ? These are all controversial issues and I am not even sure if there can be a perfect solution for all these concerns.
But it does make me wonder, that with all these inequalities and discrepancies built into the system, how does one justify the ban on a lot of performance enhancing drugs and supplements ? Once again, I do not support the use of steroids and EPO to improve athletic performance. The Olympics have evolved to represent the epitome of human spirit - our abilities and excellence. And, any form of cheating with that concept by corruption, deceit, smuggling or doping will destroy everything good that the Olympics stands for. But, at the same time, we should aim to achieve a level playing field for all, in the truest sense of the word.
Is there a perfect solution to this ? Perhaps not.
I could hazard mentioning a possibility to minimize the disparities but I know that it is an impossible scenario but that is all I can come up with. Ideally, I would think that to ensure complete fairness, all competing athletes must be given equal training, diet, supplements, resources, and other benefits for up to one year (in one common location - call it the Olympics island ;)) before the actual event. This should level the playing field for all practical purposes, the inherited genetic contributions would have to be neglected of course and this should also enable closer monitoring of substance abuse by the competing participants. While it would help to do things this way, it would also cause great inconvenience to athletes and their families in addition to being a bureaucratic nightmare for the participating countries to take care of the finances and logistics of the whole thing. I doubt it would ever happen. But, it is under conditions as stringent as these, that I would say that the games are a level playing field. But for now, from what I see, it is an arms race to better your chances at the games and not everyone is given the same weapon. It is definitely a test of human ability, spirit and endurance but not a fair test.
And given the nature of advancements that are being made, I am tempted to believe the quote from Hugh Herr at MIT in the recent issue of Nature that "performance-enhancing technologies will advance to a point that they will not only extend human limits, they will demand an Olympics of their own."
References :
1)How Kenya builds the fastest humans on Earth
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/28/157503759/kenyan-runners-dash-to-olympic-gold-and-wealth
2) A need for Speed: Inside Jamaica's sprint factory
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/151956595/a-need-for-speed-inside-jamaicas-sprint-factory
3) Performance enhancement : superhuman Athletes
http://www.nature.com/news/performance-enhancement-superhuman-athletes-1.11029
4) Science at the Olympics
http://www.nature.com/news/science-at-the-olympics-team-science-1.11013
5) Should Oscar Pistorius's Prosthetic Legs Disqualify Him from the Olympics?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-debate-oscar-pistorius-prosthetic-legs-disqualify-him-olympics&page=3
1)How Kenya builds the fastest humans on Earth
http://www.npr.org/2012/07/28/157503759/kenyan-runners-dash-to-olympic-gold-and-wealth
2) A need for Speed: Inside Jamaica's sprint factory
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/151956595/a-need-for-speed-inside-jamaicas-sprint-factory
3) Performance enhancement : superhuman Athletes
http://www.nature.com/news/performance-enhancement-superhuman-athletes-1.11029
4) Science at the Olympics
http://www.nature.com/news/science-at-the-olympics-team-science-1.11013
5) Should Oscar Pistorius's Prosthetic Legs Disqualify Him from the Olympics?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-debate-oscar-pistorius-prosthetic-legs-disqualify-him-olympics&page=3
