ABSTRACT
The chapter presents an interpretation of ‘natural athletic performance’ that can inform the understanding of sport as a human practice and serve as a regulative idea in the shaping of its rules and practices. It is argued that sport is structured around a fair equality of opportunity principle (FEO). FEO prescribes the elimination or compensation of stable inequalities upon which athletes exert little or no control. Sports cultivate inequalities in dynamic abilities that can be impacted and to a certain extent controlled by athletes. This is resonating with an idea of ‘natural performance’ understood as the systematic utilisation of the plasticity of the human organism as developed in evolution. Sport is a celebration of ‘natural’ human abilities and skills. The idea is tested in two issues: doping and the classification of athletes who do not conform to traditional binary sex schemes. The tests demonstrate that the idea is of help in line drawing and policymaking. In conclusion, sports practised according to the idea of ‘natural athletic performance’ can connect participants in deep and interactive ways with their organic nature and thereby perhaps with the more extensive natural environment of which they are parts. In this sense, sports have ecological potential.
