Perfectly honed bodies, controlled by perfectly composed minds, will tomorrow officially begin living the motto of the Olympic Games: citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher, stronger). Such is the extreme physical aptitude on display that sofa-bound spectators might be left wondering whether Olympians are perhaps some kind of alien superspecies.

The sentiment is misplaced: an average, functioning human body is itself a masterpiece of engineering, something a fact most apparent when things go wrong. That sofa-bound spectator — let us imagine her sitting down on a sofawith her feet up enjoying tea and a biscuit — is unwittingly accomplishing feats of motor control and co-ordination that are almost impossible to replicate using robotics. Scientists who develop prostheses struggle to make artificial limbs that work as well as their natural counterparts, a. This is the challenge that underpins an alternative Olympic-style event taking place in Zurich in October.

The Cybathlon, billed as the first cy-borg Olympics, is no faux Paralympics: the stars of the show will be the cutting-edge assistive technologies on display, not the disabled humans to which they are attached. Aspiring cy-clists, for example, will pedal by having their muscles electrically stimulated. By contrast, Para-lympians compete under their own muscular steam, using only commercially available devices.