ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at one particular value tension between the Olympic ideal of sport as ‘combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind’, and the high degree of specialization we find in a series of sports. It discusses the premises for the vulnerability thesis and some of its implications in terms of sport policies. The very premise for the vulnerability thesis is that certain kinds of bio-medical and bio-technological performance-enhancements are morally problematic. A clarification of the meaning of specialized performances must build on a more general idea of what an athletic performance is all about. In a sense, all athletic performances are specialized performances. The sprinter specializes in running the 100-metre as fast as possible, the soccer player specializes in playing soccer, or perhaps in certain roles on a soccer team, the decathlon participant specializes in the ten events that make up the decathlon.
