Humans are improved by technology. For instance, I’ll venture that you were vaccinated at an early age against multiple diseases, a technology that has altered the biological fabric of your body in such a way as to enhance your performance against various debilitating, even fatal, diseases.

Athletes are humans too, and they sometimes look for a performance improvement through technological enhancements. In my forthcoming book, The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports, I discuss a range of technological augmentations to both people and to sports, and the challenges that they pose for rule making. In humans, such improvements can be the result of surgery to reshape (like laser eye surgery) or strengthen (such as replacing a ligament with a tendon) the body to aid performance, or to add biological or non-biological parts that the individual wasn’t born with.

One well-known case of technological augmentation involved the South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who ran in the 2012 Olympic Games on prosthetic “blades” below his knees (during happier days for the athlete who is currently jailed in South Africa for the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp). Years before the London Games Pistorius began to have success on the track running against able-bodied athletes. As a consequence of this success and Pistorius’s interest in competing at the Olympic games, the International Association of Athletics Federations (or IAAF, which oversees elite track and field competitions) introduced a rule in 2007, focused specifically on Pistorius, prohibiting the “use of any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels, or any other element that provides the user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device.” Under this rule, Pistorius was determined by the IAAF to be ineligible to compete against able-bodied athletes.

Pistorius appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The appeal hinged on answering a metaphysical question—how fast would Pistorius have run had he been born with functioning legs below the knee? In other words, did the blades give him an advantage over other athletes that the hypothetical, able-bodied Oscar Pistorius would not have had? Because there never was an able-bodied Pistorius, the CAS looked to scientists to answer the question.

CAS concluded that the IAAF was in fact fixing the rules to prevent Pistorius from competing and that “at least some IAAF officials had determined that they did not want Mr. Pistorius to be acknowledged as eligible to compete in international IAAF-sanctioned events, regardless of the results that properly conducted scientific studies might demonstrate.” CAS determined that it was the responsibility of the IAAF to show “on the balance of probabilities” that Pistorius gained an advantage by running on his blades. CAS concluded that the research commissioned by the IAAF did not show conclusively such an advantage.

As a result, CAS ruled that Pistorius was able to compete in the London Games, where he reached the semifinals of the 400 meters. CAS concluded that resolving such disputes “must be viewed as just one of the challenges of 21st Century life.” They were right.

The most recent controversy involving a Paralympian seeking entry to the Olympic Games involved Markus Rehm, the “blade jumper,” a German long-jumper who leaps off of a prosthetic leg. Rehm lost his lower leg in a wakeboarding accident and is the current IPC world champion long jumper. His quest to jump in the Rio Olympics in 2016 was turned down by the IAAF several months ago.

The IAAF cited the fact that Rehm had not shown that he does not receive an advantage by jumped off of his blade. The double negative in the previous sentence might seem confusing, but it is accurate. In announcing the decision, the IAAF’s president, Sebastian Coe, explained: “[Rehm] has to prove that the prosthetic that he uses does not give him a competitive advantage and at this stage he has not.”

Rehm’s leaps off of his prosthetic leg are among the farthest of any athlete in the Olympics or Paralympics. Is Rehm’s incredible jumping capability because he is a remarkable athlete? Because he jumps off of a blade? Both? These are the questions that follow Rehm, and are at the centre of debate over his failed quest to compete in the Olympics. The inclusion of Pistorius in the London 2012 games might have been viewed simply a matter of fairness, but with Rehm it might mean rewriting the record books. Some leaps may be just too far.

In the Pistorius case, under the rules for inclusion in the Olympic games the burden of proof had been on the IAAF, not the athlete, to demonstrate the presence of an advantage provided by technology.

This precedent was overturned in 2015, when the IAAF quietly introduced a new rule that in such cases reverses the burden of proof. The switch placed the burden of proof on the athlete instead of the governing body. The new rule—which we might call the Rehm Rule, given its timing—states that an athlete with a prosthetic limb (specifically, any “mechanical aid”) cannot participate in IAAF events “unless the athlete can establish on the balance of probabilities that the use of an aid would not provide him with an overall competitive advantage over an athlete not using such aid.” This new rule effectively slammed the door to participation by Paralympians with prosthetics from participating in Olympic Games.

Even if an athlete might have the resources to enlist researchers to carefully study his or her performance, the IAAF requires the athlete to do something that is very difficult, and often altogether impossible—to prove a negative. In contrast, in the case of Pistorius, CAS concluded that “the IAAF rightly accepted the burden of proof” to show that a prosthetic offered an advantage in order to deny an athlete from participating in the Olympics. Because the evidence produced by the IAAF was “overall, inconclusive,” the IAAF did not meet the burden of proof necessary to disqualify him.

By 2016, the burden of proof to show no advantage gained by the use of a prosthetic leg had been shifted to the athlete. But a German scientist who studied Rehm’s jumping ability in early 2016 concluded that it was “difficult, if not impossible” to show any advantage gained by the use of the prosthetic. Another researcher commented that, in the studies of Rehm’s jumping, “detecting an advantage or a disadvantage is an impossible task.”

So the very same scientific conclusions that allowed Pistorius to participate in London 2012 were used to deny Rehm from participating in Rio 2016. The most important difference between the two cases is not the science but the shifting of the burden of proof from the IAAF to show advantage to Rehm, who must show the absence of advantage. In this instance, showing the absence of advantage is not possible.

With Rehm, the IAAF side-stepped a discussion over the inclusion of Paralympians who run on prosthetics in the Olympic games by introducing a new rule that effectively means that no athletes with prosthetics, ever again, can participate in the Olympics. During the debate over Pistorius running in the Olympics an IAAF official explained that the issue was a matter of “purity” in sport: “With all due respect, we cannot accept something that provides advantages. It affects the purity of sport.”

The Rehm Rule is certainly consistent with the value of purity in sport—if one considers prosthetics to be impurities—but what has not been discussed, at least not out in the open, is the question of whether or not the decision is consistent with broader societal values of the importance of inclusion in sport, the importance of using evidence in decision making, or even a commitment to making such important decisions out in the open rather than behind closed doors. The Rehm Rule was implemented behind the scenes without the inclusion of the sporting public or the athletes who might be affected by it. Consequently, most people don’t know that the Rehm Rule was even put into place.

Technology forces us to contemplate change. Change can be good and change can be not-so-good. For those who view sport in terms of an ideal of purity, change resulting from technology is a threat. Matt Albuquer­que, the founder of a prosthetics company, says that concern over purity masks a fear of losing a competitive advantage: “I’ve seen it. Able-bodied people do fear this advantage on the part of the ampu­tee. They fear that you aren’t just ‘normal’ again, you’re better than human.”



We may be seeing only the beginning of debates over technological augmentation and sport. Silvia Camporesi, an ethicist at King’s College London, observed: “It is plausible to think that in 50 years, or maybe less, the ‘natural’ able-bodied athletes will just appear anachronistic.” She continues: “As our concept of what is ‘natural’ depends on what we are used to, and evolves with our society and culture, so does our concept of ‘purity’ of sport.”

Both athletes and sport will continue to be transformed by tech­nology. Such transformations will create new capabilities for individuals and de­mands for and resistance to change. Sport will have to confront this challenge, whether participants like it or not. What sort of medical enhancements should be allowed? Where is the boundary between the Olympics and the Paralympics? Should there even be a bound­ary?

These questions are just starting to be asked, and the bodies that oversee sport don’t yet have answers to them. But they had bet­ter start addressing them soon. The best answers—better thought of as temporary resolutions—will come from a commitment to trans­parency, openness, discussion, and debate. What is sport? It’s what we make it. And technology guarantees that we will be constantly remaking sport as innovation proceeds.