Fairness, Regulation of Technology and Enhanced Human: A Comparative Analysis of the Pistorius Case and the Cybathlon

ABSTRACT

Ensuring fairness is a capital issue in any sporting competition. However, fairness is a complex concept. We seek here to offer an analysis of the construction and upholding of fairness within competitions in which disabled people make use of assistive technology in order to perform. In this view, we look into two cases which question, in different manners, the issues surrounding the use of technology and sporting fairness: the cases of Oscar Pistorius and of the Cybathlon. On the one hand, in the Pistorius case, the sporting institution seeks to regulate the use of technology through a scientific measure of the advantage it may grant the athlete. The difficulty of determining this advantage, and of classifying Pistorius’ performance, promoted the production of an enhanced human imagery. On the other hand, with the Cybathlon, a competition including highly technologised athletes, the promoters try on the contrary to highlight the advantages that technology can procure. The aim in that case will be for the organisers to set in place a system of rules that mirror those of sporting fairness, in spite of the central position given to technological performance. The purpose of this essay will be to understand how this sporting fairness is constructed and negotiated within two specific cases portraying the sporting practices of disabled people.

KEYWORDS:

• Fairness
• technology
• disability
• Oscar Pistorius
• Cybathlon

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The term cyborg is a contraction of the word ‘cybernetic’ and the word ‘organism’ (Wiener 1961).

2. Born with fibula hemimelia, he was amputated of both legs and started using prosthetics at a very young age.

3. George Eyser (gymnastics in the 1904 Olympics). Even after the institutionalisation of a specific competition for athletes designated as disabled; we can cite the cases of Neroli Fairhall (archery in the 1984 Olympics) and Marla Runyan (women’s 1500-metre race in the 2000 Olympics).

4. He broke the world record (T43 class) less than one month after beginning athletics. At the 2008 Paralympic Games, he won 3 gold medals.

5. Neither the regulation of athlete bodies that are not easily categorized, nor the medicalization approach used by the IAAF, are specific to Pistorius. In another paper Issanchou, Ferez, de Léséleuc (2018), we worked on similarities between Oscar Pistorius and Caster Semenya’s cases.

6. This rule bans the use of technical devices procuring an advantage on those athletes who do not use them.

7. IAAF secretary-general Pierre Weiss said Pistorius will be contacted with the news that there is no ban and he will not be excluded without scientific evidence against him.

8. For the sporting significance of this procedure, (see Issanchou, Ferez, and de Léséleuc 2018; Issanchou, Léséleuc, and Boisvert 2017; Léséleuc and Issanchou 2016).

9. For more details concerning the indicators used by Professor Brüggemann, see the CAS report.

Available at http://jurisprudence.tas-cas.org/Shared%20Documents/1480.pdf

10. Court of Arbitration for Sport, page 14.

Available at http://jurisprudence.tas-cas.org/Shared%20Documents/1480.pdf

11. He was eliminated in the semi-finals in 2011 and in 2012.

12. The iconographic representations of Oscar Pistorius, largely relayed by the media, are strongly revealing of this fiction of technological human surpassing.

13. http://www.atlantico.fr/decryptage/jo-nouveau-genre-auront-lieu-en-suisse-en-octobre-et-athletes-seront-cyborgs-cybathlon-premiers-jeux-olympiques-bioniques-2643780.html http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/03/29/worlds-first-cyborg-olympics-coming/#gref http://www.arte.tv/magazine/futuremag/fr/cybathlon-des-jo-pour-cyborg-futuremag

14. It is interesting to note the implication of the ETH Zurich in research programs concerning robot-assisted sport training: http://www.sms.hest.ethz.ch/research/current-research-projects/robot-assisted-training-in-sports.html

15. ETH community magazine September, p. 5: https://www.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/associates/services/News/life/ausgaben/englisch/eth_life_16_3_EN.pdf

16. http://www.cybathlon.ethz.ch/cybathlon-news/2016/09/congratulations-to-our-experts.html

17. https://www.paralympic.org/the-ipc/about-us

18. https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2015/05/interview_robert_riener.html