Captain America and the high-performance athlete’s body: approaches and distances

Abstract

The technology has a strong repercussion in sport, proof of this is the new forms and techniques of training that allowed progress in results. This also has an intense repercussion on the body of such athletes. This technological advance also echoes in fiction, since the writers' perception is inserted in their creations. In this creative process the technological issue is very present, especially in the character Captain America, which makes it similar to high performance sportsmen. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to relate the character to modern athletes and to perform an analysis of their approximations with the body. By way of conclusion it is indicated that the analyzes point to the existence of researches that indicate the possibility of manipulation of some genes capable of genetically improving the performance, such as: erythropoietin (EPO), IGF-1, myostatin inhibitor, PPARs, among others. These genetic alterations can be visualized in the character, due to the corporative alterations, from its fast muscular growth, its bigger corporal yield and its great physical endurance.