Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Oscar Pistorius CAS decision
How about the economic side of the matter?
Oscar Pistorius is yet to qualify for the olympics and good luck to him. But if he does, will this lead to fellow amputees crowding out the normally legged athlete?
One of the interesting conundrums posed by an anon blogger at the Sports Law Blog is that Pistorius has had an incentive to tank so as to underrepresent the 'advantage' gained by his spring blades; for the greater the revealed advantage, the less likely it would have been that CAS would rule in his favour. That's a particularly odd way of looking at this, but this is a particularly odd matter all round.
Labels: Performance Enhancement
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Enhanced Human Performance
Here are two examples of opening pandora's box and finding a can of worms.
Of greatest significance is the ruling fom the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), allowing South African 400m sprinter Oscar Pistorius attempt to qualify for the 2008 olympics. Oscar has been dealt some harsh cards in his life as a double amputee below his knees, but he has developed an impressive athletics career with the assistance of 'cheetah' racing blade prosthetic devices.
After being initially denied the right to qualify and compete at Beijing by the IAAF, the CAS ruling provides Pistorius with the opportunity to qualify.
Some South African sports scientists have a pretty interesting blog The Science of Sports that covers this matter and others quite well (as some of us blogging here at TSE have noted of late, some of these issues require the input of scientists, lest we economists end up talking through our hats). Plus, here are a couple of links to print news from USA Today and Fox Sports Australia and video on the US ABC News website to bring you up to speed on the history of the matter. The CAS website press release section has temporarily gone haywire and won't work.
From The Age (Melbourne) - Sydney Swans player Nick Malceski returns to the Australian Football League today:
Just 13 weeks after rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament, and only 86 days after undergoing surgery to correct what is normally a season-ending injury, Malceski will run onto ANZ Stadium [Sydney Olympic Stadium] and resume a season that not long ago appeared over. On February 22, Malceski underwent the revolutionary procedure of French surgeon JP Laboureau - conducted by Australian surgeon Danny Biggs - known as LARS (ligament augmentation and reconstruction system), to repair his torn ligament with a durable industrial-strength synthetic fibre.
Labels: doping, Performance Enhancement
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The Eyes Have It
A recent Los Angeles Times has an article on exercises and technology which are helping baseball players see the ball better. A sample:
The device is a high-speed pitching machine that fires specially marked tennis balls at speeds up to 155 mph. Players try to read the markings as the ball flies by, an exercise intended to improve both focus and concentration. The Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians and the Olympic champion U.S. women's softball team have experimented with the ocular machine.
Another promising advance is the amber-tinted contact lens. Baltimore's Brian Roberts, Dodgers minor leaguer James Loney and the White Sox's A.J. Pierzynski are among dozens of players who have experimented with the lenses. They are designed to filter out specific wavelengths of light, cutting down on glare and making the ball appear more clearly.
Update: one of my first responses was that this is a product of improved technology, but also of free agency as well. But then I remembered Rottenberg's Invariance Hypothesis (see here as well).
The benefits resulting from the performance enhancements would likely exist regardless of whether players had the right to free agency. Fans want to watch play of the highest quality and are willing to pay for higher levels of absolute quality, all else equal. So the performance enhancers create extra quality and, therefore, extra revenue generated by the player. The question is who lays claim to the increased revenue?
Free agency gives players a right over where they play and, indirectly a claim to revenue generated by their play. The reserve rule gives that right and the claim to revenue to teams. So under the reserve rule, teams would end up largely paying for enhancements. Under free agency, players end up paying for them.
Labels: Invariance Hypothesis, Performance Enhancement, Rottenberg
