It should be noted that Earth is a most excellent platform, domicile, habitat, and biosphere for humankind. Indeed, this species has done well in its evolutionary process to make the most of what is available, and developed a large brain to modify it further to fit its needs. Humans have also developed sports to exercise those genes, even if many are not needed due to the conquering of nature, weather, and other hungry species herein.
Okay so, let’s talk about what happens when humans go off-world, and the future of sports in space – namely the future of the Olympic Galactic Games.
Interestingly enough, I was out in Los Angeles over the Thanksgiving Holiday and the big cross-town rivalry College Football Game was on; USC Versus UCLA. Well, it wasn’t really a “game” as it was more like a slaughter with USC scoring 50 points and UCLA “zero” and two-days later the head coach of UCLA football got fired, which I suppose is quite understandable. Nevertheless, this unbalanced football game made me ponder the future of sports, and let me explain why.
You see, in college I was an athlete, a runner, and when track stars came out from Denver, training at a mile-high they certainly had the advantage competing with us out here in California at sea level, plus or minus, 50 meters. These runners were, due to their training at altitude, much better conditioned runners, and very hard to beat. Thus, what I am saying is that there are incredible advantages based on the training environment.
Therefore, those who train in off-world planets in harsh conditions, more gravity, different atmosphere, or under strenuous conditions will be hard to beat in Earth’s climate and conditions, the conditions which humans were originally evolved from. Further, over many generations, perhaps 10 or more those in the harder to deal with environments will become superior and adapted for them, which would make competing on Earth a piece of cake.
Today, the world soccer federation does not allow soccer games at the top of Bolivia’s La Paz capital because athletes cannot handle it, get fatigued, winded, and unable to compete, some even pass out. Remember there is less oxygen at altitude, and it gets cold up there, those two things combined are pure hell on human muscles that are not conditioned for that. In this case the Bolivian soccer players have a great advantage, almost as Llamas do in the higher altitudes than any of their other distant-cousin species.
The future of human evolution once diversified will bring with it different skill levels due to different environments, and thus, we should expect this to be in the future development of mankind’s sports. Please consider all this and think on it.
