YOUR starter for ten: when is a bicycle not a bicycle? Answer:
when it is ridden by Bradley Wiggins or Victoria Pendleton.
I ride a bike occasionally, but my machine is rather different
from the one on which Pendleton propelled herself to Olympic Gold
at the Velodrome this summer, and as different as Wiggo's Tour de
France numéro was from the penny farthing, or the velocipede, c.
1888.
Fitness, and all-round sporting excellence notwithstanding, it
is incontrovertible that developments in technology have also
contributed to records that would have been unthinkable even ten
years ago.
"It's not about the bike," wrote the sometime serial Tour de
France winner Lance Armstrong (recently stripped of his seven
titles on doping charges that he has now declined to contest). It's
not about the bike? Well, up to a point.
Lighter alloys, low-friction gears, ergonomic positioning of the
saddle, and handlebars have all been tested and refined to generate
maximum efficiency - until the next refinements take performances
up another notch, and shave a 100th of a second off a personal
best.
It is called by Team GB's race-director "the aggregation of
marginal gains" - the ruthless paring down of every wasteful
element, from the drag of a helmet to the perceived emotional
wastage occasioned by falling in love with your coach (a
predicament movingly described by Pendleton in her newly published
memoir).
Oscar Pistorius, the Olympian and Paralympian sprinter, is
similarly a beneficiary of advanced know-how in the field of
prosthetics technology. So, too, is Alan Oliveira, who pipped the
South African to the post before being accused by Pistorius of
benefiting too much by having longer blades.
Both athletes will be living test-beds on whom engineers and
designers will be trying out the very latest carbon-fibre
technology in the four years separating London from Rio. And, like
other runners, riders, and rowers at the top of their game, they
will be attended by sports scientists, dieticians, nutritionists,
psychologists, and biomechanics and performance analysts at the
top of theirs - all attempting to transform flesh and bone
into precision apparatus programmed to win.
But the pursuit of sporting excellence at all costs comes with
risks; not least that, in producing racing machines high on
adrenaline and low on human frailty, we sacrifice some of the less
quantifiable qualities that make humanity what it is. Few, for
example, would want to return to the Cold War days when sporting
supremacy was presented as a form of ideological and even spiritual
triumphalism.
When élite athletes talk of devoting four years of their lives
to preparing for gold, they mean it. And while we must applaud
their all-consuming focus on crossing the finishing line ahead of
the competition, we must also ask whether it is at the expense of
something more recognisably human and everyday, such as empathy,
self-doubt, modesty, and so on.
The Paralympian goalball player Anna Sharkey, for instance, may
not be alone in questioning whether élite competitive sport is an
environment conducive to the humility required of a Christian. Let
us hope that the current crop of sports scientists and motivators
at least grasps that, and knows the difference between motivation
and undue (potentially dehumanising) psychological pressure.
"Losing and dying", Lance Armstrong said, memorably, "- it's the
same thing." It was a philosophy that served him well while he was
a winner, but which seems rather hollow now.
Let us applaud, then, the interfaith team of Games Chaplains who
have been on duty for a month and more, mingling with the
performance directors and athletic coaches, and celebrating with
the winners, but also reassuring the also-rans that there is more
to life than coming first.
Trevor Barnes reports for the Sunday programme and other BBC
Religion and Ethics broadcasts.