Does a runner without legs have an advantage over those that do?
First of all, I think it should be celebrated that technology has advanced so far that we even have to consider the question. We’ve come a long way from the peg legs of Long John Silver.
Oscar Pistorius’s lower legs were amputated when he was a child and he now uses cheetah prosthetics. He is fast with them, very fast. Olympic fast. So now here’s the question: Does his “disability” give him an advantage?
Back in January the Association of Athletics Federations decided he would have an advantage based on a study by German professor Gert-Peter Brueggemann and as a result Pistorius was banned from the Olympics.
The Brueggemann tests found that Pistorius’ blades gave him a demonstrable mechanical advantage—more than 30 percent—when compared to someone not using the blades.
Pistorius used fellow athlete and cheetah user, Joseph van der Linde, to show that the cheetahs don’t give an advantage, arguing that Linde’s times increased after one of his legs had to be amputated and replaced with a Cheetah. Linde counters that the comparison really isn’t so simple
“You can’t compare the two of us.”
“I have a single amputee under the knee (Class T44). The effect is that I’m never perfectly balanced when I run and I can never reach my optimal speed.
“The calf muscles of my normal leg get tired when I run, while that’s not the case with the Cheetah limb.
“I also have to adjust the Cheetah limb to the height of my leg to ensure that they’re equally long. However, Oscar is a double amputee below the knees (T43).
“His advantage is that he can set his legs so that he’s in perfect balance when he runs. That gives him the advantage of being able to run at optimum speed.
“Oscar also does not have calf muscles that can get tired. He can therefore complete a 400m with the same driving force he started off with.
“It means that the length of Oscar’s strides can stay the same.
Van der Linde also pointed out that Pistorius could increase the length of his prosthetic limbs to take longer strides and also strengthen his upper body to take full advantage of this leverage.
Pistorius lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler, had this to say after the January ruling:
“There is a legal consensus in the world now that anyone should have a fair chance to compete.They treat this as if it were a drug case as if it were an able bodied athlete who was deliberately doing something to try to get an advantage against other athletes.’”
But is this a “fair” competition? Oscar has no calf muscles to tire out and can increase his stride length by manipulating the length of his cheetahs. I had found an article that talked more about the relationship between these two lengths but have since lost it when my computer decided to do something very strange, and haven’t been able to find it again. I don’t think it is relevant whether the advantage is gained deliberately or who gains the advantage or how the advantage is gained. An advantage is an advantage.
Pistorius appealed the ban and recently the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the decision. If he can qualify, Oscar can compete in the Olympics.
“He simply has the chance now to compete fairly and equally,” Jeffrey Kessler told The Associated Press. “We are particularly pleased that the decision is unanimous.”
I don’t think this is a good precedent to set. It may not be fair and it certainly isn’t equal.
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I’m sure there are runners out there who, if they felt it would help them be the best, would voluntarily exchange their legs for cheetahs.