The Fastest Thing on No Legs

The title is the nickname given to Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee from South Africa who is hoping to compete against able-bodied athletes at the next Olympic games. The International Association of Athletics Federations is scheduled to make the decision this spring on whether or not he will be allowed to compete in the 200- and the 400-meter runs in the Games in Beijing in 2008.
The question is if the carbon-fiber legs he runs on give him an engineered advantage over those running on natural legs. His handlers, in response to this one, invite anyone who thinks that they bestow some advantage to go and have the double amputation done and then strap on a pair of the "Cheetahs" used by Pistorius to check it out.
A reading of the current stats on world records might seem to bear out the theory that the prosthetics do indeed make the runners into bionic competitors. The average track and field world record for able-bodied athletes is nine years old for men and ten years old for women, while the records in the Paralympics can only claim a two year standing. Pistorius has broken his own world records an incredible 22 times. Of course, all the above might also mean, simply, that the manufacture of prosthetics is a little better than it used to be.
Pistorius went home from the last Paralympics with gold and four world records. He went home with silver for the 400 meter in the 2007 South African National Championships, doing so in competition against able-bodied athletes. Maybe the prosthetics have been no more than legs to someone with an attitude that means much more than the carbon-fiber he lands on. When asked about his determination to venture past the Paralympics and into the world of able-bodied competition, he says, "You'll never progress if your mind is on your disability."
The power in the stride of someone running on natural legs comes from their glutes and quadriceps, in conjunction with their calves and ankles. Since nothing below Pistorius' knees is natural, 85% of his power has to come from his hips and the rest from his knees, according to his strength trainer. He's had to work every bit as hard on his technique as any able-bodied athlete does. The prosthetics have given him nothing by magic. It seems an incredible stretch of the imagination, to me, to suggest that artificial legs constitute the same sort of cheating as drugs do. It will be most interesting to see what decision is made by the IAAF.