Author(s): CHEN, S., Institution: BEIJING SPORTS UNIVERSITY, Country: CHINA, Abstract-ID: 1601

Introduction
Augmented sport has triggered a profound crisis in the philosophy of sport, with technological intervention evolving from an auxiliary to a constitutive condition of athletic subjectivity. Existing research focuses on the erosion of athletes’ moral autonomy by technology, while this paper argues the crisis roots in the disintegration of ontological subjectivity. Taking Roman gladiators as an extreme historical case, this study explores its structural isomorphism with modern augmented sport, and constructs an ontological framework for understanding the technologization of contemporary sport.
Methods
This study adopts a phenomenological analysis approach, with Don Ihde’s Embodiment Relations as the core theoretical framework and Martin Heidegger’s Gestell (Enframing) as a supplementary tool. It conducts in-depth analysis on the technological shaping of gladiatorial subjectivity, and makes a comparative study with modern augmented sport cases including Formula 1 telemetry, carbon-plated running shoes and algorithmic decision systems, to reveal the ontological continuity of technological logic in reshaping athletic subjectivity.
Results
Roman gladiators’ equipment reconstructs their subjectivity through the three-stage embodiment relations: functional extension, bodily synergy and sensory constraint, transforming them from biological subjects into technological functional beings, which further evolve into "standing-reserve" under the technological Gestell of the arena. Modern augmented sport presents an isomorphic technological shaping process: technological interfaces pre-format athletes’ perception and movement, technological mediation evolves into digitalized Gestell, and body enhancement technology deepens technological prescriptiveness to biological and neurocognitive levels. Modern professional athletes face structural coercion of technological enhancement similar to gladiators, sharing the ontological unfreedom of sacrificing the natural body for competitive existence.
Discussion
This study verifies that the three-stage embodiment relations is a universal logical path for technology to reshape athletic subjectivity.Roman gladiators are the historical rudimentary prototype of cyborg subjectivity in sport, and modern body enhancement technology represents an advanced stage of technological embodiment relations, realizing the "absolute embodiment" of technology on the human body. This study supplements the missing links in traditional sports philosophy discussions on fairness, authenticity and athletic performance nature, and points out that the core crisis of augmented sport is the systematic dissolution of athletes’ ontological subjectivity rather than competitive unfairness. Philosophical research on sports technological enhancement must transcend instrumental rationality, and examine how technology irrevocably rewrites the constitution of human subjectivity.