Celebrating Olympia LXXXIII – If the Rules Don’t Strangle Competition

A Note about the blog posts from the future [CE 2224]: In January of 2021, with Perseverance due to land on Mars the next month, NASA activated their experimental Quantum Transmitter. The transmitter was designed to communicate with Perseverance, without regard to location and at faster than light speeds—near real-time. Unfortunately, they lost the connection after the initialization routine was completed. However, as an unintended consequence, NASA connected with a specific locus in the space-time continuum located on the Moon in 2224. That locus was the storage device of the quantum computer of a popular blog site. It is from that blog site that these blog entries are extracted. I hope you enjoy a peek into our future, and hopefully, I’m not violating some temporal directive. So far, no visit from the time cops.

Guest Author: Vivian Ndereba, Chairperson, Lunar Cities Consortium Olympic Committee (LCCOC)

Posted: Monday, May 10, 2224 (Earth Standard Calendar)

It’s almost summertime, and the Games will begin before we know it. It’s always an exciting time, and I’m particularly pleased this year to be Chairing the Lunar Cities committee as the Games expand and add more events on Luna.

This cycle, we are thrilled that the 83^rd Olympiad – Olympia LXXXIII – will expand the events on Luna to include swimming, field hockey, softball and baseball, and Gaming preliminaries and semi-finals for the Lunar teams.

The Lunar Cities are justly proud of the stadia and gaming infrastructure they’ve constructed for the games. And for the first time, the gaming finals will be held in space in the newly assembled gravity environment for the Pointe, the manufacturing facility at Lagrange 1. Space Systems Technologies has graciously agreed to delay expanding their crew accommodations and re-purpose the new gravity wheel for the Olympic competition, housing teams from Earth and Luna. We’re thankful for SST’s continued sponsorship and support of the LCCOC.

However, the continuing application of provincial Earth regulations on Luna’s Olympic participation has long been a topic of discussion between the LCCOC and the IOC. Talks continue over the IOC’s refusal to host track and field events on Luna, even though the 160-year tradition of a distributed games allows for participation by the Lunar Cities. The straight-out banning of Luna weight lifting and gymnastics contestants without a 2-year Earth acclimation period is simply unacceptable, and we continue to protest.

This year, those restrictions risk casting a pall over the introduction of the first pure Luna event – the Super Marathon. For this Olympiad, the run will be an exhibition sport, and runners from Earth and Luna will gather to challenge the 125-kilometer perimeter course at Plinius. There are rumors of a team from Mars joining, but that’s still provisional.

Here’s the point, though—the IOC has banned the use of the new bio-mechanical tight-suits the Luna runners use. The IOC insists that these new suits provide Luna runners with an unfair weight and responsiveness advantage over the established exoskeleton technology. SST engineers have certified that the new suits with a bio-engineered myelin-myocyte layer provide no more mechanical assist than the exo-skeletons. SST has even offered to supply all runners with a standard suit.

However, the IOC claims that the Lunar runners are more familiar with the suits and would be unfairly favored. The LCCOC has offered to house athletes that want to train with the new suits in advance of the competition. The IOC has not agreed, but we will continue to negotiate and push forward with our proposal to let the runners decide.

Finally, we’re hoping that with the completion of the independence effort that will establish the Lunar Cities as a sovereign nation and a full member of the IOC, we can effectively resist these efforts of Earth to dictate the rules. Rest assured your Chairperson and the LCCOC will continue to promote change in the best interest of Luna’s athletes and, by extension, promote a fair and level playing field for all Olympiads.

We’ll keep you posted and on to the Games of the 83^rd Olympiad.