But machines certainly take something away from chess champions. Chess champions have traditionally been awe-inspiring figures with mysterious and rare powers. They could do miraculous things at the chessboard. They were magicians, adepts of an esoteric, inexhaustible art.
Computer scientists, alas, are busily dismantling the magic. Soon there will be world championships in which the least informed people on the planet will be the actual participants. Any jerk with a cheap pocket computer will be able to strip any position bare in seconds. Chess champions will no longer be comparable to fiery Zen masters or enigmatic gurus. They will be more like "human calculators", guys with a penchant for multiplying 5-digit numbers in their heads - mildly impressive but not very interesting or exciting.
Chess is so well-established that it will be popular for a long time to come. But the runner/race car analogy is flawed. Race cars cannot detract from human athletics because they have nothing to do with the physical excellence of a human body. Computers, on the other hand, rob the chess champion of his ability to do the rare and inexplicable.