Abstract
Two technological innovations were attracted in Beijing Olympic Games. The one is the Laser Racer of Speed Company and the other is the artificial legs of handicapped sprinter, Oscar Pistorius. The former produced many world records in swimming races and the latter is better than normal legs of ordinary persons in sprinting. Laser Racer is not swimming wear but the gear because of needing more than 30 minutes for dressing it and constricting the body for making stream-line of it. Artificial legs of Pistorius are no longer assistant tools but promoting units. These innovations foretaste some new types of sporting body in the near future, android- or cyborg-athletes, and propose the significant theme of sport sociology on the relation of physical power and technology.
Generalizing of sporting body historically, we can find three models, Fighter, Sportsman, and Athlete, in the metamorphosis. Fighter was an armed body by military technology in ancient Greece, sportsman was an educated body by moral technology in England, and Athlete is a specialized body for the sport by sport technology. These sporting bodies symbolized the ideal types of the technologicalized flesh in each age.
The concept of Physical power was innovated as an abstract concept for the needs of abstract labor and abstract armed force, and was embodied through physical examination and draft examination. The success of this conceptualizing transmitted the relation of body and technology from technology for the body to body for the technology. From the view point of this context, sporting body may be modeled as any cyber-athlete in cyberspace in the near future.
