History Main / MuggleSportsSuperAthletes

** ''Franchise/SpiderMan'': Peter Parker originally used his superpowers to moonlight as a wrestler for extra money. Also seen in other media like ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderMan'' in which Peter excels in basketball and skateboard too, but with fame as what he looks for instead of money.

** ''Franchise/XMen'':

* ''LightNovel/OutbreakCompany'': When Shinichi tries to set up a soccer league in the Kingdom of Eldant, he foolishly directs interested players to [[ImprobableSportsSKills heavily-stylised sports]] anime like ''VideoGame/InazumaEleven'' in order to get a feel for the game. Lacking any frame of reference for "normal" soccer, this results in students using their magic to fly around the field creating forcefields and setting the ball on fire. Shinichi initially tries to just ban the use of magic, until the [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent dwarf]] team protest that the [[LittleBitBeastly beastfolks']] physical abilities would give them an overwhelming advantage. In response, the JSDF team resort to ''shooting the ball with machine guns'' in an attempt to slow it down. Surprisingly the ultimate winners are the [[LizardFolk lizardmen]], who are used to guarding their eggs by dribbling them along the ground.
* The 1952 ScienceFiction novel ''Limbo'' by Bernard Wolfe is about a post-WWIII world where people willingly amputate their limbs for [[ArtificialLimbs nuclear-powered prosthetics]]. The Olympic Games is still held but with cybernetic athletes. The United States, which has been winning every year, gets a nasty shock when it turns out the Eastbloc has been secretly developing more advanced prosthetics.

This trope is often used in VideoGames as a way to introduce novelty into them, often in the form of charged, superpowered shots (a la ''VideoGame/MarioStrikers'' or ''VideoGame/HeadSports''). This is often a DefiedTrope, as many settings with powers [[TooQualifiedToApply bar said powers from sporting events]]. Alternatively, and often in response to the previous scenario, there'll be a version/league of the sport played ''only'' by superhumans.

SubTrope of MundaneUtility, and closely related to ImprobableSportsSkills. For using superpowers in games of chance, see ParanormalGamblingAdvantage. Do not confuse with BoxingLessonsForSuperman. See also SmugSuper, GoKartingWithBowser and TooQualifiedToApply.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Aberrant}}'': A background note is that the Olympics got reorganized to have a "nova" division... but when that wasn't enough to attract people, then the XWF (''eXtreme Wrestling Federation'', all of the {{Kayfabe}} of the Wrestling/{{WWF}} and a lot of extra collateral damage and bloodshed (courtesy of the Novas being able to survive that kind of stuff)) was born.

* ''Film/ShaolinSoccer'': The movie is about super-powerful but down-in-the-dumps kung fu practitioners trying to find a good use for their abilities. They end up becoming a soccer team under a former soccer player, Hung, and they use their powerful kung fu techniques to dominate the local soccer tournament.

* In ''Series/{{The Flash|2014}}'', Barry plays softball on the police team. To make it fair, he refuses to use his powers to take unfair advantage. Unfortunately, he is otherwise a [[{{Nerd}} Lab Geek]], ''lousy'' at sports, and relegated to playing right field.

* In ''Series/MyHero'', Thermoman kept getting challenged to various sport events whole in his civilian identity. While playing golf, he hits the ball so hard: the first one punctures a car door, the second one crashes through a cafe roof where it gets mistaken for a UFO, and the final one strikes a guy's head and he gets hospitalized. He later gets challenged to swimming where he allegedly won by "half a second" but only because he had stopped half way to comb his hair.

* ''LightNovel/OutbreakCompany'': When Shinichi tries to set up a soccer league in the Kingdom of Eldant, he foolishly directs interested players to [[ImprobableSportsSKills heavily-stylised sports]] anime like ''Anime/InazumaEleven'' in order to get a feel for the game. Lacking any frame of reference for "normal" soccer, this results in students using their magic to fly around the field creating forcefields and setting the ball on fire. Shinichi initially tries to just ban the use of magic, until the [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent dwarf]] team protest that the [[LittleBitBeastly beastfolks']] physical abilities would give them an overwhelming advantage. In response, the JSDF team resort to ''shooting the ball with machine guns'' in an attempt to slow it down. Surprisingly the ultimate winners are the [[LizardFolk lizardmen]], who are used to guarding their eggs by dribbling them along the ground.

* ''Anime/InazumaEleven'': The whole point of the franchise is that soccer can create EnlightenmentSuperpowers in teenagers, which they use to play the occasional AbsurdlyHighStakesGame. The franchise eventually introduces a bunch of villains from the future that have come back ''Terminator''-style to MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight (although ''they'' believe it's actually SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong) because the empowered teens and their descendants made an awful lot of ruckus with said powers as time went by.

* In ''Series/{{The Flash|2014}}'', Barry plays softball on the police team. To make it fair, he refuses to use his powers to take unfair advantage. Unfortunately, he is otherwise a [[HollywoodNerd Lab Geek]], ''lousy'' at sports, and relegated to playing right field.

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* Downplayed in the BaseballEpisode of ''Manga/JujutsuKaisen'': Most of the players ''weren't'' allowed to used cursed techniques, but one outfielder per team was to compensate for the lack of players (in Momo's case, using her FlyingBroom to catch pop flies). Many of them also had inherent supernatural powers they couldn't "turn off" anyway--since Mechamaru is actually a mechanical RemoteBody, which had been destroyed, the replacement was ''a pitching machine'' version.

* You've all heard of regular go-karting, right? Well VideoGame/MarioKart is like that, except contestants can use mushrooms for speed boosts, fire homing red shells and near-unavoidable blue shells that automatically target whoever's leading the race and slam into them from above, turn invincible and call upon lightning to shrink their opponents.

* TJ Combo from ''VideoGame/KillerInstinct'' remade illegally with [[EvilInc Ultratech]] his arms with ArtificialLimbs so he can win easily in boxing. Eventually this was discovered and he was banned. His story in the first game is about entering the Ultratech tournament to get some money.

* You all heard of regular go-karting right? Well VideoGame/MarioKart is like that except contestants can eat mushrooms for speed boosts, fire homing red shells, turn into an invincible mode or call upon lightning to shrink your opponents.

SubTrope of MundaneUtility, and closely related to ImprobableSportsSkills. Do not confuse with BoxingLessonsForSuperman. See also SmugSuper, GoKartingWithBowser and TooQualifiedToApply.

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** Saikawa challenges a bunch of playground bullies to a game of dodgeball, before realizing she doesn't have a team. Luckily she's best friends with Kanna, a dragon disguised as a human, who then gathers up all her dragon friends to accept the challenge. Needless to say the dragons lay waste to the opposition. In fact they were so bored by the lack of any challenge they decided to continue the game between themselves without holding back, causing the ball to get thrown around at supersonic speed.
** Subverted when Kanna partakes in her school's sports event. She has kept her dragon abilities in check to it's not apparent she's superhuman, though she still end up as the top athlete of her class.

* ''Film/{{Twilight}}'': The Cullens can only play baseball during a thunderstorm, because their superstrength means the crack of the bat sounds like thunder. They also gleefully use all their abilities to make the game exciting.

* The end of ''Film/ZoomAcademyForSuperheroes'' shows that Tucker, whose power is expansion, took up goalkeeping in soccer, and is easily aboe to keep clean sheets by simply expanding the size of his hands to swat balls out.

* In Season 2 of ''Series/LukeCage'', Luke finds himself in desperate need of money. A lot of his hot prospects have dried up since he was recently videoed getting one-hit KO'd by the season's villain. In the ensuing montage, he gets turned down by a sports team because his powers constitute an unfair advantage.