Thursday, 31 July
8.00pm

The Winning Edge
In terms of population, Australia is a relatively small country. Yet when it comes to our Olympic sportsmen and women, we punch amazingly well above our weight. Australia's real secret weapon is the quality of our scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport. AIS Director, Peter Fricker, says "the scientists really are the unsung heroes". When 0.1% in performance can make the difference between first and last he believes, "there's a real sense of our scientists that they really have contributed to a gold medal performance". Jonica Newby goes behind the scenes at the AIS, getting rare access to view the winning formulas our sports scientists have been concocting for two of Australia's Olympic athletes.

Doping for Gold
In the highly competitive world of elite sport, science is a double-edged sword - providing athletes not just with a winning edge but also the covert means to cheat the system. As athletes move from one undetectable substance to the next, scientists must come up with the tests needed to expose the cheats. Tests have already been developed for the banned blood doping hormone Erythropoietin (EPO), the anabolic steroid Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), and human growth hormone, but the new performancing enhancing method of choice is gene doping. How is genetic technology being applied to sport? How does it work? And what are the implications for athletes willing to subject themselves to this 'Franken-science' manipulation?

Blade Runners
In the future, will we see disabled athletes competing side by side with the able bodied? South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius has had both legs amputated below the knee, but he runs so fast on his carbon-fibre artificial feet he can beat many able-bodied athletes, and he wants to compete in the regular Olympics rather than the Paralympics. But should he be barred because his highly springy feet give him an unfair advantage? Catalyst sheds some light on the matter by taking Australian Paralympian, Don Elgin, to a biomechanics lab to test whether these artificial feet do give an advantage.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, August 01 at 5:35pm