Ask Ms. Jessica Issue 50 – Mutant Sports (Patreon)

(The content for Ask Ms. Jessica comes from real questions from real people sent to AskMsJessica@gmail.com)

Hello Ms. Jessica so i am curious, are there special sports for just mutants or have mutants an (unfair) advantage or disadvantage in normal sports?

So, yes, unfortunately we have had to rethink the way we do sporting events once mutants became commonplace. However, we did have some precedents that gave us an idea of what to do.

For example, weight classes and divisions are nothing new in sports. We simply say that two people who are wrestling have to be about the same weight or else it’s unfair. Same thing for boxing and some track and field events.

We basically took that reasoning and applied it to mutations. People with two legs don’t race against people with four legs. People with tentacles don’t wrestle with people with standard limbs.

Once again this is something that is handled country by country but internationally the Olympic commission has a method for determining which mutants should be in what classes, and the answer is statistics. They keep track of every sporting event they can, and those numbers can teach us a lot about how to classify mutants. For example, if humantaurs average a certain speed above tripods, then it’s clear they need to be in different classes. However, if among all global competitions their average times are within a margin of error then they can compete against each other.

This is all just for individual sports. Team sports, however, are less of a big teal. Teams are big enough that it’s generally assumed that all advantages and disadvantages via mutant team members will eventually even each other out, and the math supports this. Sure, a mutant might have a bit of an advantage, but star players are nothing new. No one wanted to go up against Michael Jordan in basketball, Babe Ruth in baseball, or Lionel Messi in soccer. Having a star player that outperforms the rest of the team is nothing new for sports, so it doesn’t particularly matter if they are a mutant or not.

And while mutations can confer you some advantages in competitive sports, a lot of mutants find that their mutations do not equate an instant win. Mutants with much higher speed, strength, or stamina will join sports teams only to find that some human players will still outperform them. That’s because skill and talent are still a factors and there aren’t mutations that can grant you that.

Or at least we think there isn’t… Maybe we should look into whether someone can be genetically good at soccer…