The Olympic Games ended in spectacular fashion on Sunday. And while we are already looking forward to the Paralympic Games, you can’t help but wonder if there is a world where all the Olympic Games take place at the same time and where all athletes with a disability compete against each other.
Apple’s new short film, The Relay, approaches the idea of co-ed games, pitting eight athletes with and without disabilities against each other.
Directed by Sound of metal‘s Derek Cianfrance, The Relay features several athletes on their way to competing in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Of course, the film isn’t just about competition, but is also clearly designed to highlight, in part, various adaptive technologies within the Apple ecosystem.
One of the featured apps is Magnifier + Point and Speak, which allows visually impaired people to point at things, which the phone then identifies and reads descriptions aloud. The athletes are also using Wheelchair Workouts and Assistive Touch on Apple Watch.
Apple has a long history of incorporating adaptive technologies such as Voice Over into its iPhonesMacs, iPads, and Apple Watches. This fall, the platform lineup (iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sonoma, watchOS 10) is scheduled to be updated with several new features. These include Music Haptics on iPhone, which lets people feel the music even if they can’t hear it. There’s also Eye Tracking on iPad and iPhone, and Live Captions is coming to Apple Vision Pro.
In the less than four-minute video, available 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. Each race pits a fully able-bodied athlete against a differently abled athlete. While the competition may seem worrisome, the athletes make it clear that they approach the competition in the same way. In the video, one blade runner notes that “when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was run and race like my friends.”
A swimmer with limited vision who is participating says, “There is no difference between me and any other swimmer. When I go into the water, I want to win.”
Apple worked with the Challenged Athletes Foundationan organization dedicated to supporting athletic ability among physically disabled athletes, ensuring that these athletes and their use of Apple technologies are portrayed realistically.
The short film opens with the athletes prepping and training for their competitions, using various Apple products to track things like heart rate, voice content, and Magnifier + Point and Speak, but it’s the competitive video bits that are the most exciting, taking you back, for a moment, to the excitement of the Olympics. The only thing missing are the crowds and, well, the actual Olympics. For that, we’ll have to wait until 2028 in Los Angeles, where, we can only hope, some of these athletes make the cut.
Whatever your level, if you’ve spent a lot of time watching the Olympics over the past two weeks, you’ll enjoy a little bit of athleticism thanks to this new Apple movie.