Gaaa! I can't find the reference to a short story I've read about an over-developed future where the entertainment of the time is "athlete performers wearing body/environment capture suits" who are trained for "any scenario" and then randomly dropped into alien primitive populations where they have to survive, live without detection, and their "reality show goal" is to become a leader or otherwise pivotal to that primitive race, all the while not being discovered by "the Federation" type of modern police because such intervention with a primitive race is highly illegal. The public watches it all in a "body sim" like VR player. Is this triggering anybody's memory? Can't believe I'm blanking on the author...