#michael crawley

It is possible to imagine a future in which sporting performances are attributed to personalised technologies or biomedical protocols, rather than to characteristics such as grit, determination and sacrifice, or the communities that nurtured an athlete in the first place. As societies increasingly delegate human attributes in wider spheres of life to machines and pharmaceuticals – intuitive feeling to self-tracking devices, thinking to AI, self-discipline to appetite suppressants – it is important not to lose sight of human connection along the way. The self-quantification that is increasingly available in devices and apps can indeed help to hold us accountable to our individual selves and positively change behaviour, but the scope of their measurements and guidance will always eventually be eclipsed by the totality of being human. Whether you are an athlete or not, we are all, at our core, social creatures and, to be at our best, we need others to push and pull us there.