Wednesday, January 26, 2011

[gdqxondl] Subjective Qualification Criteria Athletic Competitions

Athletes are required to publicly disclose all drugs taken as well as their training regimen, and nothing is forbidden ab initio.  Drug testing and other monitoring is still performed to prevent athletes from lying on their disclosure.  It's sport -- entertainment -- secrets do not benefit humanity.

Nominally the fastest / strongest / highest etc are recognized (I hesitate to say "rewarded") only because it is interesting to know what the human body can do when there are no restrictions.

However, the bulk of the prizes are given by external subjective entities deciding who gets their prizes based on subjective evaluation of, say, performance enhancing drug use, and performance.  One entity might give awards only to athletes who consume no drugs at all: no caffeine, pain killers, marijuana; another might only forbid performance enhancing drugs.  Once any criteria are permitted (it's the external entity's prize money), we can easily add to this framework all kinds of different prizes, for examples best female, or under 18, or over 50, or one legged, or Jewish, or Sub-Saharan African, or white (last one sponsored by the Klan, of course).

Reminds me of the "All Drug Olympics" Saturday Night Live skit.

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