IT, Olympic Games, and the Silver Generation

What would the Olympic Games be without Information Technology (IT)? Not just because we can sit in front of a digital screen and replay our favourite finals, or check immediately on Wikipedia how many people live in Jamaica. The way in which IT enables one to measure and compute tiny portions of time and space has allowed some sports to survive and even flourish.

It would be hard to understand what fencing or the 100 metres would look like, if we were unable to analyse fractions of a second as significant magnitudes, or if inches could not be magnified into huge gaps. IT permeates sport, from initial training through performance to final enjoyment; so, even those activities that seem IT-free, from golf to sailing, are deeply indebted to the information revolution.

Indeed, some sports have embraced IT with gusto, if some initial reluctance. Wimbledon is now more interesting and fairer because we can all witness whether the ball really failed to touch the white line, and take that into account officially as well. The 2008 final was one of the most beautiful ever played also because Federer and Nadal knew there was an objective system of evaluation in place. Fair-computing helps fair-play and has replaced McEnroe’s shouting.

And yet, despite the obvious advantages brought about by IT applications, some other sports, like football, are lagging behind, somewhat suspiciously. During the last World Cup, France was not awarded a perfectly good goal against Korea Republic because the referee and his linesmen failed to see that the ball had passed the line. The controversy prompted an official statement by Markus Siegler, a FIFA spokesperson, who confirmed the impossibility of any reliance on IT because “its introduction depends on a system being developed that is 100 percent reliable”.

This is ignorance, bad faith or a combination of both. Obviously, no IT system will ever be totally reliable. But why trusting even less reliable and more fallible, if not bribable, referees or the “hand of God” when IT could improve the quality of the game so dramatically? The only thing better that a human or a computer is a combination of the two. We should Wimbledise the most popular sport on earth asap.

Of course, IT systems may also be unsafe. We have not heard of any spectacular glitch in the computers of the Olympic Games, nor of any nerdy fan hacking into the Beijing system to improve the results of his heroes. But it is possible, and the reliance on IT is now such that a small fraction of a digit could make the difference between a silver and a bronze medal (recall the two Jamaican athletes, both running the Olympic Women's 100m Final in exactly 10.98). So it may happen one day. After all, this year there was already some unconfirmed news that hackers had managed to change the headlines of the official Chinese Olympic website into orange, the symbolic colour of the human rights abuses in China (http://www.thecolororange.net/uk/page211).

The shortcomings of IT should not be an argument against its adoption in games and competitions. Indeed, as we push the limits of what human bodies and skills may achieve, we may wish to be increasingly precise about the differences between athletes and the results they obtain. My bet is that, in the close future, five-digit measures will seem obvious. And this leads me to a final remark, not about computable figures but about irreversible numbers: age.

The Olympic Games were a young nation’s invention. They were meant to celebrate youth, physical abilities and healthiness, fair-play, psychological and mental qualities. In the long run, they were inevitably found to be inadequate to acknowledge achievements amid human limits and diversities. Women do not compete with Men. We now have the Paralympic Games, the Special Olympics, and Singapore will host the first Youth Olympic Games in 2010, featuring athletes between the ages of 14 and 18. Other games, though not officially recognised by the IOC, include the Gay Games. Only one category seems to be missing and, in terms of size of the population affected, it is the classic elephant in the room: the Silver Games, for people over 65. In a fast-aging world, where obesity is a plague, and National Health Services devour fundings, the Silver Games could provide a great incentive to keep fit and healthy and a lesson that sport can be a mature game. After all, many sports have different leagues for more senior participants. Anyone from the IOC reading this blog?