Winning the Race?: Religion, Hope, and the Reshaping of the Athletic Enhancement Debate

Examining hope as a spiritual dimension of sport-how hope is morally relevant to the sport enhancement debate

should high-tech prosthetic limbs be permissible in elite sports competitions? Why are caffeine and engineer new enhancing options such as genetic modification technologies that increase muscle strength, or individualized nutritional genomic programs for elite athletes? The ethics debate about the use of enhancements in elite sport is becoming increasingly complex. Yet we are not asking what relevance sports’ religious dimension has to this debate.

Through an examination of literature on the relationship between sport, religion and spirituality, hope emerges as a compelling feature of sport and a significant part of what makes sport meaningful. Trothen explores four main locations of hope in sport: winning, losing, and anticipation; star athletes; perfect moments; and relational embodiment, and examines how these locations intersect with the enhancement debate.

Using Christian theological reflection to problematize the four main approaches to the ethical question of enhancement use in elite sport, and the underlying values informing these approaches, Trothen asks: How will hope in sport potentially be affected by techno-science? And how might a valuing of sports’ spiritual dimension-and particularly hope-reshape the sport enhancement debate? The clear conclusion is that sports’ spiritual dimension includes hope, and the locations of hope in sport are morally relevant to the sport enhancement discussion.