Article Summary by Edmund Barker and Harry Parker

Assistive technologies, such as wheelchairs and prosthetic legs, have been helping some people participate in Sport who wouldn’t be able to otherwise. In some ways these technologies have helped to make disability more present and visible across many sporting cultures. For the most part, however, differently abled bodies continue to be excluded from, or negatively positioned in, these public arenas. Advanced technologies, such as robotic exoskeletons and brain-computer interfaces, are starting to feature in new sporting events such as the CYBATHON. Accounting for recent trends and controversies we suggest that there is no clear way forward: neither promoting nor policing the use of such technologies provides simple answers to the marginalisation of disability in sport.

This paper responds to this impasse. We follow recent developments to imagine what future sports might look like, creating comic strips that bring these to life. We discuss these futures, unpacking the possible positive and negative implications for people with disabilities. Staying faithful to the complexity of these issues we do not argue for a specific direction of travel. Instead, the paper concludes by highlighting key tensions that will need to be navigated as the relationships between sport, technology, and the (dis)abled body continue to shift.

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