Flying without wings? Try running without legs

Hitchcocker

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London 2012 Olympics: Oscar Pistorius running for South Africa surely epitomises the spirit of the Games

After some gentle manipulation of their own rules on qualifying standards, the South African Athletics Association announced on Wednesday that Oscar Pistorius will wear the green and gold vest in the forthcoming Olympics.

True grit: Oscar Pistorius confounding all logic is evidence not of something mechanical but very human: the triumphant power of will.

He will line up in both the 400 x 400-metre relay and the individual event. Which is not a bad achievement given he does not possess what might be considered rather fundamental tools of his trade: legs.

Bizarrely, it is his very incapacity that has made the selection of Pistorius a contentious one. There are those who maintain that the fact he runs on a pair of blades constructed of carbon fibre rather than flesh and bone makes it inappropriate for him to be at the games.

Sure, the argument goes, let him run as he will be doing against similarly equipped athletes in the Paralympics. But his detractors claim his presence in the Olympics themselves is just wrong. Nobody knows precisely how much of an advantage those prosthetic limbs give him. And by letting him into the most famous one-lap dash in world sport, do we not risk turning the purest of athletic pursuits into an arms race of mechanical assistance?

As an argument that is about as rational as the one which insists David Beckham should be in the GB football team because he nicely fills an Olympic blazer. That Pistorius has made it to the start line in Stratford is not a consequence of scientific aid. He has made it by exercising the most extraordinary levels of grit, determination and mental strength.

When it comes to demonstrating the power of sport, there is surely no finer example than the 25 year old from Johannesburg who was born with a congenital condition which meant his lower limbs had to be ********ly removed when he was but 11 months old.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/ol...urely-epitomises-the-spirit-of-the-Games.html
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I can understand the reasoning for not wanting him in but I think it would be great for the sport ifhe actually won!

Discuss?
 
inappropriate for him to be at the games.
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:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

fecking wankers. If he is fast enough he has every right to be at the games. In fact its bullshit they separate the two games in the first place. People piss and moan about equality but nobody gives a second though to the handicap. They belong alongside their fellow able body athletes, not some fecking side show two weeks later.
 
What if he could run it in 6 seconds though? Would it be a fair event then?
 
But what if that disadvantage actually turns out to be a major advantage, in terms of speed? Yes, he doesn't have the natural set-up like the other athletes, and it wasn't out of choice, but if that leads to him being able to run 5 times faster than anyone else because of the work he's had done, then should he be allowed to compete? This scenario obviously doesn't apply to him, as he isn't road-runner, but I'm just exploring what if's. Credit to him anyway to get this far with such a handicap.
 
I don't see how you can make it so that he is competing on a level playing field no matter how brilliant he is. Is it still fair if you make even better replacement legs that make him even faster?

Love the guys attitude but I'm not sure that you can justify it. Wheelchair athletes beat marathon runners by about 45 minutes so perhaps we should reduce wheel size and let them take part in the same races? A silly example perhaps but it does illustrates the problem.
 
Exactly, it might not be such an issue with this guy because he probably can't beat the fastest athletes, but there will come a point where someone who has a similar story to his can, and then what exactly would be the point in watching a race where someone with a mechanical or some other advantage can completely batter anyone else.

I can't see why he wouldn't be suitable for the paralympics, it seems a bit stupid to hold those games if you aren't going to keep it completely separate.
 
I should clarify my point above about the para olympics, I the case of this bloke I believe if he can do it, fair fecks, but in terms of saying they should compete alongside their able body counterparts, I meant as in the games being held together while remaining in their individual competitions. Have month long games instead of two weeks.
 
That would be a good idea and may give the Para Oympics a wider audience.
 
Hectic said:
Exactly, it might not be such an issue with this guy because he probably can't beat the fastest athletes, but there will come a point where someone who has a similar story to his can, and then what exactly would be the point in watching a race where someone with a mechanical or some other advantage can completely batter anyone else.

I can't see why he wouldn't be suitable for the paralympics, it seems a bit stupid to hold those games if you aren't going to keep it completely separate.
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Would you be willing to amputate your legs if they promised you carbon fibre add ons which would help you be a world class sprinter? I'm not sure many people would agree to it.
 
Hectic said:
Exactly, it might not be such an issue with this guy because he probably can't beat the fastest athletes, but there will come a point where someone who has a similar story to his can, and then what exactly would be the point in watching a race where someone with a mechanical or some other advantage can completely batter anyone else.

I can't see why he wouldn't be suitable for the paralympics, it seems a bit stupid to hold those games if you aren't going to keep it completely separate.
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This is kind of the discussion I have had about the Paralymipcs. The Olympics I get, who is the strongest, fastest, fittest or most skilled. With the Paralymics, without meaning to sound horrible, isn't it a case of who is the least disabled?

I'm probably being incredibly ignorant here and they have their own parameters but say someone has 1 leg and they enter on a prosthetic, do they compete against someone with 2 prosthetics or do they have their own races? If they have their own races? If so are there more than one criteria? So you can be "not disabled enough for one but too disabled for another? If this is the case where does it stop? Surely it just ends up being a competition of the fittest, strongest, fastest and most skilled which is just "The Olympics".
 
Wibble said:
I don't think he chose to lose his legs TBH.
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Which is exactly the point, he lost his legs unwillingly and yet people are questioning that it's giving him an unfair advantage over able bodied athletes.

They're just embarrassed that he's outrunning abled bodied athletes, hence all the legal complication for him to take part in the Olympics.
 
cj4_elmo said:
Would you be willing to amputate your legs if they promised you carbon fibre add ons which would help you be a world class sprinter? I'm not sure many people would agree to it.
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Is that the point?
 
cj4_elmo said:
Which is exactly the point, he lost his legs unwillingly and yet people are questioning that it's giving him an unfair advantage over able bodied athletes.
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No, they are talking hypothetics. If they develop this technology to a point where an athlete gains an advantage over his competitors then surely it becomes an unfair advantage? A bionic man.

What's to say he hasn't already got an advantage and he wouldn't be able to run the time he can without them and one of his fellow countrymen is missing out.

All I know is that it's going to make a cringeworthy photo which will be shared by the usual idiots on Facebook with the words "can" "adversity" and a question designed to make you feel bad about who you are.
 
cj4_elmo said:
Which is exactly the point, he lost his legs unwillingly and yet people are questioning that it's giving him an unfair advantage over able bodied athletes.

They're just embarrassed that he's outrunning abled bodied athletes, hence all the legal complication for him to take part in the Olympics.
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Yeah, but it's not a question of how you end up with the disadvantage. If it could make him run 10 times faster than the nearest opponent, it would give him an unfair advantage, regardless of how he got it. It would also make the competition a much poorer event to watch.
 
Forgive my ignorance of the subject, but surely Oscar wouldn't have the problem able-bodied athletes face, in that he wouldn't be prone to 'pull up' in a race?
 
SteveJ said:
Forgive my ignorance of the subject, but surely Oscar wouldn't have the problem able-bodied athletes face, in that he wouldn't be prone to 'pull up' in a race?
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Is a good point. There is your advantage, he could win by every athlete pulling up with a calf strain and he's immune. Ridiculous? Yes, but not impossible all the same!
 
This scientific debate is at the heart of the fear that drove athletics’ governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), to first ban Pistorius from their competitions in 2008. The IAAF are convinced that, although he is still running times which as yet do not make him a medal threat in major events, there will come a time soon when prosthetics technology is so advanced that “disabled” runners will be swifter than the Michael Johnsons of this world. Indeed, Hugh Herr, the scientist who has contributed to Pistorius’s achievement, believes that disabled people will soon be smashing world records set by able‑bodied sportsmen and women. It was Herr, head of biomechanotronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and himself a double amputee, who persuaded the IAAF to reverse its ban, allowing Pistorius to compete alongside able-bodied athletes.

That decision remains controversial, and clouded by a plethora of polarised scientific views, none of which can yet be definitively proved. One critic maintains that because the blades are so much lighter than legs, Pistorius uses less energy running at the same speed as able-bodied athletes, nor do his blades tire as the lower limbs of an able-bodied athlete do during a race.

Another professor counters that the blades are a disadvantage, because Pistorius cannot push off and accelerate from the blocks as the able-bodied do, and that his fatigue levels are the same as for those supposedly drowning in lactic acid on the home straight.
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mildly interesting link(6 slides) http://www.nytimes.com/ref/sports/20070514_RUNNER_GRAPHIC.html

Lots of debate surrounding this, his ban was actually reversed on a technicality.
 
See, so at what point does that become unfair on the athletes who haven't suffered injuries, resulting in prosthetic technonology that makes them faster than able-bodied athletes?

Surely there has to be one eye on the future here, rather than just the advantage this one man might or might not have.
 
All it will take is a world record assisted by blades or some other "bionic" technology and sense will prevail. There are so many different categories at the Para Olympics for this very reason, it is almost impossible for people with different disabilities and assistive technologies to race fairly against each other.
 
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