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Is Any Olympic Athlete Truly Natural? A Philosophical and Ethical Inquiry
Reflections on Naturalness, Fairness, and Performance Enhancement
Sports competitions like the Olympics always come with their share of questions and scandals. This year Olympics in Paris was no exception and I would be willing to bet that future Olympics will also face similar questions.
The main issue that comes up again and again in sports is doping. We question whether an athlete’s performance is natural or whether they might have had an unfair advantage. The first thing we think about when considering if an athlete is ‘natural’ is the use of performance-enhancing drugs. However, consider the following.
Athletes are well trained and capable of performances that ‘normal people’, whatever such an expression may mean, cannot even dream of. Most of us will never be able to run a marathon in under 2:10 like the top 16 marathoners, or run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds, like the finalists for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
From a philosophical point of view, such a question as “Are these athletes natural?” is far from simple. What do you mean by ‘natural’? since it is certainly not ‘natural’ for most people to run the 100 meters in only 10 seconds.
