When is sports equipment so good that it is actually a scam?
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There are plenty of cool sporting goods that are banned in sports because they make the athletes too good. Swimsuits that make the swimmer too streamlined, gloves that give the receiver's hands too much grip, bats that allow the player to hit the ball too hard, and shoes that allow a runner to gain too much speed…

It's called "TECH DOPING": using physical equipment to gain an unfair advantage. In this video, I'll show you the banned equipment you won't see at the Paris Olympics, and the cutting-edge technology you will see that is at the very edge of what's allowed.

You may be thinking: Wait a minute, no equipment should give athletes an advantage! But… we don't run barefoot anymore. We don't swim naked anymore. We use technology to play sports. And that technology is constantly improving and expanding human capabilities.

So… where is the limit?

It's about much more than just sports. Technology is driving our possibilities in every area of our lives! And it's up to us to decide what we want from it. This video addresses that question.
We talked to athletes, looked at the best gear in the world and even went to Nike's test lab to try on the US team's real Olympic uniforms. This is what the cutting edge of sports technology looks like.

Chapter:
0:00 What is “technology doping”?
1:48 Which equipment should be banned?
3:10 The fastest swimsuit in the world
4:23 Should this be allowed?
5:24 The fastest shoes in the world
6:28 I cut open a super shoe
8:32 What makes super shoes so fast?
9:28 I try on the US team's Olympic uniform
11:36 Should these shoes be allowed?
12:42 Should prostheses be allowed?
14:01 Why Blake Leeper was banned from the Olympic Games
15:46 What is fair?
16:38 😉

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Biography:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, "Huge If True," Cleo examines complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive future scenarios they can help shape. Before going freelance, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox's Netflix show "Explained." She produced videos for Vox's YouTube channel, hosted and executive produced Vox's first-ever daily show, "Answered," and co-hosted and produced Vox's YouTube Originals show "Glad You Asked."

Additional reading and sights:
– Grab and Go: How sticky gloves changed football, NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/20/sports/super-bowl-nfl-gloves.html
– Space-age swimsuit reduces drag and breaks records, NASA: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/ch_4.html
– Swimming bans high-tech suits, an era comes to an end, NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/sports/25swim.html
– FINA LZR Racer ruling: https://www.pvswim.org/official/rules/FINA_Swimsuits_2009-07.pdf
– Nike's fastest shoes could give runners an even bigger advantage than we thought. The conclusion: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/13/upshot/nike-vaporfly-next-percent-shoe-estimates.html
– Supershoes are changing long-distance running, MIT Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/25/1093520/supershoes-running-kenya-carbon-plate-shoes/
– The controversy behind Nike's Vaporfly running shoe, explained, WSJ: https://youtu.be/wVXrIaPuP7c?si=btJyElVpQjbUpzaQ
– The science behind the world's fastest shoe, Cheddar: https://youtu.be/Mm61IkzyJxI?si=py7XHYQGOwgP4TYQ
– How Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in under 2 hours, Mike Boyd: https://youtu.be/A73HQwEct-o?si=uUk3mSj1YRR6KLXM
– He could be the first American amputee to compete in the Olympics, Blake Leeper, Great Big Story: https://youtu.be/_P9GXINym4s?si=_y8JL-7n9qw2x6_J
– The shoe was so good that the Olympics declared it a fraud, but it's half as interesting: https://youtu.be/JRyqd0Z6kZI?si=8m1tfbmprNcRKOPl

Vox: https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/

Equipment I used:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro

Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox

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Welcome to the joke from the bottom:

Which sport always gets into trouble?
Badminton.

Find a way to use "trouble" in a comment to let me know you're a real human who made it to the end of the description 🙂

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