The question of human limits in sporting performance is a recurring one in the press, usually when a world record that was considered unbeatable is broken. The answer to this question usually comes in the form of technical or scientific explanations about training systems or the evolution of sports equipment. However, it is rare to approach it from an ethical and legal-regulatory perspective.

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Are there ethical or legal limits to sports performance?

Sport is a specifically human activity full of meaning and symbolism, which has been fulfilling a social function in modern societies for several centuries, but which has deep cultural roots at the dawn of civilisation. Like any other human activity, it is constantly evolving with the progress of society and in parallel with it. Without going into disquisitions or differences of a cultural nature, the progress of sport today is measured by the continuous breaking of records. Records to beat are measured in metres, seconds, kilograms, cups, trophies, championships... it doesn't matter what the measure is, the important thing is to maintain an idea of constant progress based on indicators that allow us to verify that today we have gone further than yesterday.

We all know that records, by definition, insofar as they represent the maximum development of a discipline or sport over time, expressed in quantifiable terms, are not easily surpassed. But they always end up being broken. Sooner or later, the records fall; sooner or later, the marks, the measurements, the quantifiable are surpassed. A number of journalistic rather than scientific questions arise: Until when? What is the limit? Will there come a time when human beings reach their limits and these marks can no longer be surpassed? Will we see an involution of them?

Put in this way, we will not spend a second answering these questions. We will simply assume that records are there to be broken; that is essentially what modern high-performance sport has become since its origins in Victorian England in the early 19th century. And today's post-modern sport, with some significant variations, adding individualism and a concern for equality and respect for the environment, follows the same path.

Having said that, let us pose the question in another way: are there or should there be ethical or legal limits to sporting performance? Since there seem to be no technical or technological limits (theoretical ones perhaps, but they always end up vanishing), which would allow us to predict the stagnation of sporting records, let us at least consider whether there should be, or de facto are, any other kind of limits.

Sport, on many occasions, arises from the evolution of a previous human activity whose meaning has been changed for some specific purpose (running to escape, to run to win; swimming to ford a river, to get to the other end first; kicking a ball to warm up your feet, to score goals, etc., etc.). These changes have always been and are legal, regulatory changes. Basically, the essence of any sport is its rules, a code or set of rules that regulate the game, and that foresee sanctions when they are not complied with. And these rules must always respond to ethics, to values. If the rules change, the sport changes, and the ethics that support it change. Let's take an example. If we allow the use of doping substances in sport, sport itself will become a circus, whose ethics would no longer be that of fair confrontation subject to rules, but an activity in which the integrity and health of the participants could not be assured.

Breaking the rules, in sport or in life, has always favoured spectacular advances from a positivist (not positive law), materialist and result-oriented point of view; but it does so at the cost of calling into question its qualitative, normative and ethical values. Therefore, the possible limits to the evolution of sports should be in the norms and rules that define them, not in the natural (human) or artificial (technological, but also human) progression of brands and results.

Today's sport is in danger, like everything that changes naturally, as a result of the progress of society (which is always a natural progress) and of evolution itself. If we look back, everything has changed, not only in sport, but in all spheres of life. Sport is advancing along with society, like any other institution or human activity. The sport that we play today, that we play today, is not the same as the sport we played yesterday... many of the rules have changed, but, above all, people and societies have changed; their values have changed.

I am totally convinced that as long as high-performance sport exists, based on the constant improvement of marks and records, these marks, results and records will continue to be surpassed. And this is not essentially a bad thing; on the contrary, it represents values characteristic of today's society, according to which, through effort, sacrifice and work, one can improve and advance. And so, all the means and systems surrounding high-performance sport improve: nutrition; training systems; materials; technology; training of coaches; the use of artificial intelligence to detect talent; big data to predict results by processing and analysing millions of data generated in the environment of sport and the athlete, etc., etc., etc.

So where is the risk or danger facing sport and society today? The danger lies in the change of values that has reduced sport to a spectacle, performance to beating records, the means to just ends, forgetting the most important thing: the path. We must continue to believe in sport, in the human values it embodies, many of them inherited from our classical roots and represented by Olympism. A sport without shortcuts, where the rules are respected, and where the rules are changed or adapted to take into account the values of sport, not just the mere uncritical entertainment of the masses.

Sport today is heir to two fundamental traditions: the Greek agon and the Roman ludus. It is essential that we continue to maintain the ludic element (play, fun), but without forgetting its agonal part (struggle, combat), because it is in sport that human beings are able to know their limits and to know themselves, they are able to try out very useful behaviours to transfer to life and become citizens: learning to win and to lose, to cooperate and to compete, always from the point of view of sportsmanship.

The only limits we should place on sport, at least in its high-performance version, are the same as those we should place on science, technology and human development. There are great dangers and challenges ahead, but I am sure that we will be able to maintain the essence of sport, which is its human values, while at the same time advancing and evolving in its forms and ways, so that sport remains one of the most important pastimes of the human species and a source of meaning for millions of people.