The silly season isn't reserved just for hallucinations about health care "death panels" that would snuff out grandma to save money. Amateur sports came through this summer with its own daffiness.
The Fédération Internationale de Natation has decreed that racing swimsuits designed with a buoyancy quality would prostitute the sport by artificially increasing speeds of swimmers. Purists were shocked by the "enhanced performance" benefits of the suits.
Well, now. Competitive sports, including amateur athletics, have been enhancing performance in sports for as long as games have been around. Athletes long ago stopped relying on mere brute strength and steely mental concentration to win. Sports invest fortunes in state-of-the-art sciences to develop equipment as well as body and mental conditioning to improve odds of victory.
· Even in swimming competition, full-body wool or cotton suits of yesteryear have been replaced by sleek, skin-tight Lycra and Spandex materials that were welcomed as a way of improving speeds by the same purists who're now banning buoyant materials.
· Until the mid-1960s, wood was standard in tennis racquets. Then came metal and by the mid-1970s racquets had huge heads with a larger "sweet spot" and improbable string tensions, allowing players to whip serves to speeds of more than 100 miles per hour. Gone, too, are the flat-soled tennis shoes, now replaced with scientifically engineered footwear that enhances foot speed with grip soles.
· Racing bikes are marvels of "enhanced performance" through light construction materials and specially engineered gears.
· Pole vaulters have reached new heights with composite material poles that seem to fling them over bars.
· Although designated as safety improvements, helmets, shoulder pads, masks, shin guards and other equipment also free athletes from the worry of injury and thus encourage them to hurl themselves more aggressively into play.
· Baseball bats once were little more than simple wood. Now they're scientifically designed with sophisticated weight and balance to maximize distance of hit balls.
· When I was a teen attempting to learn springboard diving, boards were heavy wooden beasts. Now they're lightweight aluminum alloy with enormous flex that gives divers greater height to execute astonishing acrobatics considered impossible in my youth.
· Olympians spend months enduring grueling training and conditioning in multi-million dollar facilities stocked with exotic body-building equipment to enhance breathing and muscle power for improved performance.
· When exhausted football players sit on the sidelines whiffing oxygen and gulping Gatorade to replenish their energy, what else but "enhanced performance" is being achieved?
