Sport beyond gender and the emergence of cyborg athletes

The essay is based on two premises: (1) sports culture (as we know it) is based upon rather specific (masculine) gender structures; (2) technological innovations play a significant role in modern sport. I combine these two premises and discuss whether technologies can be used as tools in order to make sport gender neutral and therefore more genuine or authentic. I argue that we have good reasons to make such a claim, based on the fast development of sport technology as a whole. But this claim is not unproblematic. In fact, the main problem may not be the advantages that come with the technologies, but that we tend to hold on to conservative ideas regarding gender. Nonetheless, perhaps the development of sport technologies may undermine the foundation of gender, which may in turn lead to the birth of a new kind of athlete: (non-gendered) cyborg athletes.