It’s fair to say that sport has a doping problem. From Lance Armstrong to allegedly 99% of Russian athletes, there are competitors out there who will do whatever it takes to win, even if that means breaking the rules and using performance-enhancing drugs.

But getting smacked up on steroids isn’t the only option for athletes who want to cheat. Technology is increasingly being used to give competitors an advantage, but is using souped-up kits any better? For instance, the 2008 Beijing Olympics saw many swimmers sporting Speedo’s LZR Racer bodysuits. The suits hugged the body up to 70 times tighter than traditional suits, were engineered to repel water and gave the wearer extra buoyancy. Unsurprisingly, swimmers who wore them won 98% of all the swimming competitions at the games. The authorities deemed that this was technology doping and banned swimmers from wearing the LZR at the 2010 Vancouver Games. But clothes and helmets that boost aerodynamics in cycling or sailing harnesses that have nano-coatings to repel liquid are all still allowed.

Every athlete is looking to enhance their performance, to go faster and compete for longer than their rivals, and technology is as much a part of an athlete’s arsenal as training, nutrition and coaching. But unlike those other tools, which can only ever serve to optimise humans for competition, making them the best that they can be, technology has the potential to enhance athletes’ abilities beyond what nature has given them, which is pretty much the definition of doping, and that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?

A question of finance

People have a massive problem with traditional, drug-based doping, and it’s universally accepted that doping is wrong and athletes who are caught are deserving of our fury and scorn. But we happily accept that athletes gain advantages from technology, and these advantages aren’t open to all competitors. At Rio 2016, USA’s track and field athletes will wear Nike uniforms that incorporate AeroSwift technology that has been developed through hundreds of hours of wind tunnel testing. Clearly not every nation will have access to this kind of technology.

Anyone arguing that technological aids in cycling and swimming are unfair because of disparate access would need to interrogate the entire relationship between money and sporting success

If it’s because of finance that poorer nations don’t do well, or in some instance even bother competing, in sports involving a lot of technology, such as cycling, sailing and rowing, then it’s hard to argue that some competitors are gaining an unfair advantage. But where do we draw the line? Should richer countries competing in professional sports also be expected to scale back on coaches, nutritionists and sports science as well?

“One argument is that they [athletes kits] cost money and not everyone can afford them,” says vice-chair of the British Philosophy of Sport Association, Paul Davis. “While such an argument should not be dismissed, it seems inconsistent with a multitude of performance-relevant inequalities which are not held up as unfair. For instance, some but not others can afford state of the art equipment, some but not others can afford the best coaches and physicians, some but not others can afford expensive travel in pursuit of their ambitions and some but not others are in the right place and time for external funding.

“Therefore, anyone arguing that technological aids in cycling and swimming are unfair because of disparate access would need to interrogate the entire relationship between money and sporting success.”

Athletes or their toys

The Olympics are the pinnacle of many athletes’ careers, where all their hard work and honed abilities are showcased in front of an expectant public. While it’s understandable that athletes would want to enter the Olympic arena in equipment that gives them the best chance of victory, it’s important that it is the athlete’s actual abilities that separate winners from losers because no one wants the Olympic Games to be reduced to an arms race between various sporting brands.

“The idea here is that sport should be a test of ‘pure’ ability, therefore external factors which might affect performance threaten to mislead about who is the best, and so shouldn’t be allowed” says Davis. “The problem with this idea is, again, the difficulty of conceptualising and isolating the essence that is supposed to be personal ability. No one suggests that if hard training, effective diet, expert coaching or physician advice contribute to one’s success, then that success is not a genuine measure of one’s ability and should be struck off the record. Therefore, it isn’t clear why a performance-enhancing technological aid should be thought to provide a fraudulent result.

“There are other domains in which technological opportunism is not thought to threaten authenticity. The obvious example is music, where the use of technology might contribute to a result that inspires awe, and only among a very few to the reaction that ‘it’s just technology, it isn’t really them doing it.'”

Athletes watching athletes

Currently it is the responsibility of each individual sport’s governing body to decide whether technology doping has occurred. But should we expect more from the athletes themselves? If swimmers recognise that they are more buoyant because of a swimsuit, it’s reasonable to expect them to report this, rather than using the equipment and waiting for the sport’s governing body to rule that they gained an unfair advantage.

No one wants to see the luddite Olympics where technology has no part to play in helping athletes, but where it is so blatantly enhancing athletes abilities beyond what they are actually capable of then they have to decide where the line is between being competitive and gaining an unfair advantage.

“There is a strong case that performers themselves should play a central role in determining policy. Performers are liable to have a different attitude to a policy that is chosen and not imposed,” says Davis. “We should not assume that there must be a one-size-fits-all approach. We might end up with precise permissions and prohibitions for precise reasons. There are, again, many different communities within a given sport, and it might be that, say, professional cyclists feel differently from amateur or that different age groups feel differently. If we end up with a situation which is messy-but-workable, then that perhaps reflects sport itself.”