Technological Doping vs. Good Equipment in the Olympics

Ever since the first athlete was barred from the Olympics in 1967 for substance abuse, doping has changed the history of sports. It is estimated that from 1967 to 2020, about 442 athletes have been guilty of this illegal activity and today doping is more advanced than ever before. Doping is defined as the act of taking or using a performance substance or technology that gives athletes an unfair advantage in sports competitions. Currently, most doping is being regulated by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which has brought countries from all over the world to agree to a strict set of anti-doping codes. While doping has been popular among athletes seeking to find any boost in their competitions, it is illegal because of not only the unfair advantage it gives the using athletes, but also health risks associated with certain performance enhancement drugs and the protection of the integrity of sports competitions. Currently, if an athlete is found to be doping in a sports competition, punishments can range from disqualification from all future competitions for a number of years to a forfeiture of medals, however, these punishments do not always apply to minor athletes.

A new development that has taken the sports world by storm is technological doping, or the use of any technology or equipment that gives athletes an unfair advantage over their competitors. This new cheating method was first used in the 2008 Beijing Olympics when Speedo launched its LZR bathing suit. This bathing suit was made of a material engineered to mimic shark skin, used ultrasonic stitch bonding, and increased compression of air in the suit to increase buoyancy, all to create a suit that reduced drag against swimmers by about 24 percent. It is estimated that 98 percent of records broken during that Olympics were done while wearing the suit. Due to the enormous advantage given to swimmers wearing the suit, after the 2008 Olympics, the LZR suit was banned from further competitions. Some have argued that technological advancements in the sports field should be embraced as the future of sports. Others protest that this technology, which is only available to athletes from wealthy countries, runs the risk of making future competitions a contest between each country’s money rather than the skills of their athletes.  

However, this idea of technological doping as an unfair advantage for wealthy countries is hypocritical given its policy that allows all countries to pay for their own equipment. Olympic teams are sponsored by private and public companies who cover all costs not paid by the International Olympic Committee. While this may make the competition seem more fair, it actually creates division since prominent countries such as the US are sponsored by large corporations like Visa and Nike, while other countries who may not have such large sponsorships may not be able to afford equipment of equal quality. The issue with technological doping is that unlike traditional substance abuse, it highlights a history within sports competitions like the Olympics of giving developed, wealthy countries an advantage over developing, poorer countries. While the Olympics claims to be a fair competition, the sad reality is that money can take an athlete almost as far as skill and the gap is only getting larger through the development of expensive new technologies such as the 2008 LZR suit. These new changes highlight a question more relevant now than ever, are the Olympics truly a measure of a country’s skill or just their GDP?