The Olympic committee has banned all modified athletes from competing in this year’s games after gold medalist and current record holder in 5K event Cecilia Potungai was found to be augmented with both heart and lung implants.
The sudden verdict has been heavily contested since being announced. Despite the backlash, the Olympic committee has stood firm on its decision and immediately banned the use of all implants after the scandal, on the grounds of fairness for all athletes and the purity of the competition. It published a list of body augments in addition to an already long list of restricted performance enhancing substances. The committee expressed concern that the current trend may encourage athletes to deliberately modify their anatomy which goes against the values of the Olympic movement. Their official statement says: “... the Olympics holds the principle of every athlete being equal close to their identity, and feels having biomechanically enhanced participants is a violation of their millennia long history of ethics and philosophies”.
Rigorous testing has already gotten underway on the local level for all this year’s competing athletes, with both doctors and cybernetics experts being brought in to conduct the intensive cross-examinations. As modifications are hard to trace these days, some of the tests will include full body X-rays, MRA scans, and highly sophisticated reflex tests.
This in itself has brought more controversy as both athletes and fans alike take to social media to protest. A petition has been started to oppose the committee's decision, with hundreds of signatures being added worldwide every hour. Athletes formed a modified athletes Olympic movement with the plan to run augmented Olympics in parallel.
Olympic games have vastly fallen in popularity in recent years and been all together overshadowed by sports that do allow enhanced athletes to compete. With the games this year set to be held in the Uber-Modern Megacities of Abu Dhabi, officials there have openly welcomed the idea of allowing modified athletes to participate in an attempt to attract more viewers.
Meanwhile the next challenge is already looming on the horizon: genetically modified athletes. Junior leagues are already dominated by kids who went through gene therapy at different stages of their development. With many artificial genetic markers completely indistinguishable from natural occurrences it would require no less than a lie detector to spot the modification.
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