The athlete as model organism: The everyday practice of the science of human performance

Abstract

Behind every champion athlete are scores of physiologists studying his or her performance. This is no new phenomenon. Since the late 19th century, physiologists have been bringing ‘well-trained’ athletes into their labs to produce knowledge about how human bodies work, to determine the causes of human fatigue, and to probe human limits. In this article, I argue that the athlete, like the fruit fly or the mouse cress plant, can be considered a model organism. Ethnographic data are presented from 7 months of participant-observation and semistructured interviews in three human performance laboratories located in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Ethnographic data suggest that the athlete functions as a model organism in physiology for two reasons. First, athletes ‘accommodate’ the particular experimental instruments and practical demands of fatigue research. Second, a distinct ‘biosociality’ drives the choice of athlete as model organism.