The Olympics wrapped up in spectacular fashion on Sunday, and while we have the Paralympics to look forward to, it does make you wonder if there’s a world where all the Olympics happen at the same time and where all differently-abled athletes compete against one another.
Apple’s new short film, The Relay, approaches the idea, in a fashion, of co-mingled games with eight athletes with and without disabilities competing against each other.
Directed by Sound of Metal‘s Derek Cianfrance, The Relay includes some athletes on a path to compete in the 2028 Olympic games in Los Angeles. Naturally, the film is not only about competition but also obviously designed, in part, to highlight various adaptive technologies across the Apple ecosystem.
Among those highlighted are Magnifier + Point and Speak, which lets those with vision impairments point at things that the phone then identifies and reads the descriptions out loud. The athletes also use Wheelchair workouts and Assistive Touch on Apple Watch.
Apple has a long history of building adaptive technologies like Voice Over into its iPhones, Macs, iPads, and Apple Watches. This fall, it plans to update the platform lineup (iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sonoma, watchOS 10) with several new features. These include Music Haptics on the iPhone, which allows people to feel the music even if they can’t hear it. There’s also Eye Tracking on the iPad and iPhone, and Live Captions are coming to Apple Vision Pro.
In the not-quite-four-minute video, viewable on Apple.com and YouTube, the athletes compete in four races, including a 50-meter swim, a 400-meter run, and a 100-meter sprint. In each, a fully-abled athlete is pitted against a differently-abled one. While the competition might appear worrisome, the athletes all make it clear that they approach competition the same way. In the video, a blade runner notes how, “As a kid, all I wanted to do was to run and race just like my friends.”
A swimmer competing with limited vision says,” There’s no difference between me and any other swimmer. When I get in the water I want to win.”
Apple worked with the Challenged Athletes Foundation, an organization focused on supporting athleticism among physically challenged athletes, to make sure that these athletes and their use of Apple’s technologies were depicted realistically.
At the start of the short film, the athletes prepare and train for their competitions using various Apple products to track things like heart rate, Spoken Content, and Magnifier + Point and Speak, but it’s the competitive video bits that are the most exciting part and will, ever so briefly, take you back to the excitement of the Olympics. All that’s missing are the crowds and, well, the actual Olympics. For those, we’ll have to wait until 2028 in Los Angeles, where, one can only hope, some of these athletes make the cut.
Whatever your abilities, if you spent way too much time watching the Olympics over the last two weeks, you’ll enjoy the little hit of athleticism provided by this new Apple film.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
