blade runner gets advantage
Mike Sullivan
South African sprinter, Oscar Pistorious, and whether his
prosthetics gave him an unfair advantage.
Here's an article, but was unable to find the study itself.
http://www.france24.com/en/node/4928564
AFP - The artificial legs of South African paralympic champion Oscar "Blade
Runner" Pistorius give him a clear advantage, taking at least 10 seconds off
his 400-meter time, a US study said Wednesday.
"Pistorius's sprinting mechanics are anomalous, advantageous and directly
attributable to how much lighter and springier his artificial limbs are,"
wrote professor Peter Weyand, a co-author of the research.
"The blades enhance sprint running speeds by 15-30 percent," said Weyand, a
professor of physiology and biomechanics at Southern Methodist University in
Texas.
Matthew Bundle, assistant professor of biomechanics at the University of
Wyoming, said most of Pistorius's speed advantage could be explained by how
quickly his lightweight limbs allow him to reposition his legs.
"At top speed, Oscar Pistorius repositions his limbs 15 percent more rapidly
than six of the most recent world record holders in the 100 meter dash,"
wrote Bundle, calling his limb repositioning times "literally off the
charts."
The springy, lightweight, J-shaped limbs called "Cheetahs" allow Pistorius
to attain the same sprinting speeds with 20 percent less ground force than
able-bodied runners, and reduce to less than half the muscle force required
for sprinting, the researchers said.
Weyand and Bundle analyzed the lower limbs on which Pistorius raced to three
gold medals at the Beijing Paralympics.
The Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport in May last year lifted a ban
on him competing in able-bodied track competitions.
The ban had been imposed by the International Amateur Athletics Federation
(IAAF), which said Pistorius's limbs gave him an unfair advantage.
Pistorius missed out on a place on the South African team at the Beijing
Olympics last year but hopes to qualify for the 2012 Games in London.
Carl Douglas
I have sensed throughout "l'Affaire Pistorius" that there may be those
who'd prefer that legless would-be runners run on their stumps :(
I'd guess that having effective prostheses gives a runner all of a 30%
speed improvement over having no legs at all, but what does that mean?
Wouldn't someone with just stumps be expected to be a whole lot quicker
in "repositioning" their much shorter lighter residual limbs, even with
lower leg prostheses?
Do they want disabled athletes to add weights to their prostheses?
Doesn't someone with less in the way of legs tend to weigh a bit less
than an able-bodied sprinter, making lower ground forces not so surprising?
Don't able-bodied runners get pretty picky about their own prostheses,
i.e their track shoes? Don't mechanical sports get quite excited about
racing equipment?
What about all the disadvantages these disabled runners have had to
overcome to get where they are? Was that "fair"? Was being born, or
becoming, disabled "fair"?
I am just depressed by the ways in which folk in possession of all 4
limbs look for ways to label a tough & determined disabled athlete as a
cheat. Is Usain Bolt a cheat for being taller, or faster, than other
runners? Are skinny marathon runners cheats for carrying less weight
than sprinters. Are able-bodied cyclists whingeing about those who have
disabilities yet are getting very close to moving from paralympic to
open competition?
:(
Carl
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Teaplant
the personal fairness that Carl mentions, but mechanical fairness.
No one would dispute that this athlete should be entitled to compete
to represent his country, regardless of disability. Nonetheless,
however unfair his personal circumstances are, there is simply no way
that fairness can be reliably and accurately be restored by using
these artificial limbs.
How would one assess at which point the artificial limbs
overcompensate (mechanically, not personally)? Consider an athlete
(with or without absent limbs) adding additional height/stride length
to gain an advantage? I bet a lot of Usain Bolt's colleagues in the
100m would like a few extra inches of springy carbon-fibre to help
them to reach his incredible top speed. Clearly ridiculous but how
are these things assessed? And why is our instant reaction to a
scientific assessment to criticise the results as being 'depressing'
and 'unfair'.
My point is that sport has to be simple to be fair. I am not looking
forward to going over this again. We all have reasons why we're not
olympic athletes (except the odd RSR reader who is one!), some are
fair (aka self inflicted) others are not (genetic or accidental).
Elite sport should be a level playing field, and that means fairer to
some than to others.
sorry - no offence intended to anyone, my focus is entirely on the
mechanical side of things.
teaplant.
ps on a side note: why is wheelchair basketball solely a paralympic
sport? Why is it not an olympic sport? What advantage do able-bodied
athletes have?
Carl Douglas
All excellent points. And part of fairness is our right to disagree ;)
(BTW, didn't other reports discount the value of the blades? What is
the current scientific balance on this issue?)
I don't know how we can begin to create true fairness in sport, since
sport is fundamentally unfair to the most of us whose genes, environment
& background leave them short of that unique combination of physical &
mental attributes necessary to become champions.
But I would suppose that Pistorius' Cheetah prostheses are available to
other disabled runners? Anyway, AFAIK at this moment he is not
challenging the top sprinters, who have most to lose from a
prosthetically-advantaged runner.
We've moved from cinders as a running surface to the Tartan Track & who
knows what. Does that make today's records less valuable than the first
4 minute mile? Unlike today's top runners (& let's not discuss certain
golfers), Bannister went unpaid, he returned to his real day job
directly after taking that record, yet continued racing. And in his
long medical career has made great contributions. That's a real-life
sportsman & human - modest not arrogant, not blethering mindlessly on
about PBs & "feeling gutted", & in sport for the joy it brings rather
than the dosh.
What I sense in the extreme concern over Pistorius's accessories is that
some able-bodied runners, their coaches and the sport's officials might
be getting worried that someone with a disability might muscle in on
their crock of gold. Maybe I'm wrong, but so much investment into
opposing this one guy's ambitions does seem misplaced when other
athletes retain records & funds which were most probably won with
chemical assistance.
And I do worry, if able-bodied sport continues thus, that athletes with
any kind of prosthesis without which they could not hope to compete will
be challenged. And even those with no prosthesis? Do we really want to
define athletes more minutely by their physical attributes, extending
the range of categories under which the evidently disabled are currently
categorised? Should we have running events restricted to those with
short, fat, hairy legs, or penalise those with long limbs?
In short, is it worth all the bother & unpleasantness? The world of top
sport is pretty unpleasant already, with indecent amounts of money
flowing to the athletically gifted, cheating of many kinds rife, agents
& pharmacists doing wonderfully well & a steady drip of bent competitors
being detected while others move on to the next supposedly undetectable
fix - gene therapy next? If a guy or gal with genuine disability can
find a way to the top in that melee, then good luck to them.
Meanwhile, what's happening to support sport in the real world, i.e. at
the grass roots? I think it could use some of what has been spent by
researchers & officialdom in finding ways to keep Pistorius out.
Tinus
but as technology proceeds prosthetics might evolve to become
superior. At that point prosthetics might be seen on the same page as
doping (two important properties of doping is that it is both
enhancing performance and harmful for health.)
If one would allow prosthetics in able-bodied sports this might
introduce inequalities in favour of prosthetics which sportsmen
without those prosthetic aids will try to overcome by getting
prosthetics as well. I don't believe that this is desirable in the
near future. Because of that, the same health arguments which work
against doping might in some way work against prosthetics as well.
Also, what is to gained by allowing people with prosthetics to compete
in competitions for people without prosthetics? If one would allow
prosthetics then one might end up with able bodied people deliberately
amputate themselves and get prosthetics. Eventually we will end up
with a competition in which people with prosthetics compete with the
same gene advantages and disadvantages as seen when they would have
been competing without prosthetics. The idea of competition as
exercise in which people overcome defined boundaries and behave
according to a set of rules is not improved. The competition does not
become more fair but one does end up with people deliberately
mutilating themselves. I believe that prosthetics as ergogenic aid
besides reconstruction aid will remain undesirable in the near future.
> What about all the disadvantages these disabled runners have had to
> overcome to get where they are? Was that "fair"? Was being born, or
> becoming, disabled "fair"?
Disabled people currently have their own competition from which able
bodied people are excluded because of their advantage. For the same
reasons it seems logical that able bodied people will have their own
competition from which prosthetics are excluded. The open class in
which able bodied people compete becomes a closed class and the closed
class in which disabled people compete becomes an open class.
btw. Fair play in sport by Sigmund Loland is an interesting book to
read in order to answer ethical questions (or end up with being even
more puzzled). A formal justice norm is discussed in the book:
' Relevantly equal cases ought to be treated equally, cases that are
relevantly unequal can be treated unequally, and unequal treatment
ought to stand in reasonable accordance to the actual inequality
between cases'
this norm is treated in parts. Some interesting ones for the
discussion about prosthetics are:
'1.1 All competitors ought to be given equal opportunity to perform
trough eliminating or compensating for non-relevant inequalities'
(in rowing lane advantage due to wind is an important non relevant
inequality. Advantage because of being stronger is not a non-relevant
inequality)
'1.1.3 Competitors ought to be differentiated in classes in classes
only in the cases where inequalities in person-dependent matters, that
they cannot influence in any significant way and for which they cannot
be held responsible, have systematic and significant influence on
athletic performance.'
'1.1.3.1 Where inequalities in body size, sex and age exert
significant and systematic influence on athletic performance, such
inequalities ought to be eliminated or compensated for by establishing
reasonably standardized weight, height, sex, and age classes.'
(As long as there is difference in performance between athletes
with and without prosthetics is seems reasonably to me that they
compete in different classes. As soon as athletes with prosthetics
become the better one might think about including that event in the
general Olympics instead of the Paralympics. But, that's another
discussion.)
'1.1.4 Inequalities in access to resources that are not subject to
voluntary choice, and that exert significant and systematic influence
on athletic performance , ought to be eliminated or compensated for by
regulation of the competitive situation, and/or by relevant
standardization procedures.'
(A reasonable solution might be to have the people with and without
prostheses compete with each other but have limits for the properties
of the prostheses. Although standardization can be difficult, e.g
swimming suits.)
'2.1.1 In sport, unequal treatment ought to be based upon inequalities
in performance within the framework of the relevant ethos that
are:... ...in accordance with a basic norm of not exposing others and
oneself to unnecessary harm'
(The similarity between ergogenic doping and ergogenic mechanical
aids seems relevant to me.)
Mike Sullivan
"Carl Douglas" <ca...@carldouglas.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7ns8f3F...@mid.individual.net...
> Teaplant wrote:
snip
Like Teaplant, I've weighed in exhaustively on this topic. If it were
about
rowing safety, technique, or training I would go ahead and repeat myself.
>
> (BTW, didn't other reports discount the value of the blades? What is the
> current scientific balance on this issue?)
I posted the link because the latest study came out about this topic
just Nov 19. When I looked up authors, "prosthesis", etc on google
scholar I was unable to come up with the published paper itself,
so I have no idea how good the paper was, or if it was more definitive
than previous looks at the issue.
mruscoe
> Last year we had a rather vigorous discussion over the
> South African sprinter, Oscar Pistorious, and whether his
> prosthetics gave him an unfair advantage.
>
> Here's an article, but was unable to find the study itself.
>
> http://www.france24.com/en/node/4928564
>
> AFP - The artificial legs of South African paralympic champion Oscar "Blade
> Runner" Pistorius give him a clear advantage, taking at least 10 seconds off
> his 400-meter time, a US study said Wednesday.
zeke_hoskin
More power to Pistorius, say I.
Handicapping is a difficult craft. As a one-legged rower, I choose to
compete with able-bodied athletes
in my vicinity rather than travel hundreds of miles to find equally
disadvantaged competitors, and with
a single exception, I don't bitch about it. (The exception is that in
events where everybody has a
handicap measured in seconds, I get less handicap that able-bodied
athletes a year older. But I
wouldn't be close to winning anyway, so what the hell.) And I've never
yet lacked help to get my
boat off the car and into the water.
That said: we are teetering on the edge of an era where *powered*
prosthetics *will* outperform
flesh and blood. If I had a million dollars and were silly enough to
do it, I could have a ten-horsepower
rowing prosthetic built and either wax my opponents or rip my fingers
off and break my back trying to
hold onto the oars when the damn thing kicked in. It may well be
reasonable to ban powered devices
from open competition.//Zeke Hoskin
Dave Sill
>
> http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/short/01238.2009v2
"We conclude that the moment in athletic history when engineered limbs
outperform biological limbs has already passed."
That says it all, really.
Used to be that requiring "handicapped" or "disabled" people to compete
against "able-bodied" athletes was obviously unfair. Now we're at the
point where it may well be unfair to able-bodied athletes to require
them to compete against people with better-than-human prosthetics.
-Dave
Dave Sill
> At this point disabled people are still seen as having disadvantages
> but as technology proceeds prosthetics might evolve to become
> superior.
It seems we're already past that point, at least in the case of dual
lower-leg prosthetics for runners.
> At that point prosthetics might be seen on the same page as
> doping (two important properties of doping is that it is both
> enhancing performance and harmful for health.)
Since when is it required that a substance or procedure has to be
harmful in order to be considered doping? Autologous red blood cell
transfusions and moderate EPO or HGH use aren't inherently harmful, but
I've never seen any attempt to allow them to be used safely, e.g.,
openly and administered and monitored by medical professionals.
-Dave
Carl Douglas
Errr...? That seems awfully selective reading, Dave.
Two opposed opinions were firmly stated. Then the points made in the
opening statements were argued, so that readers could reach their own
decisions. Note that the counterpoint ends as follows:
"Based on substantial data rather than conjecture, we conclude that
lower-limb amputation and modern running prostheses do not facilitate
unnaturally fast leg swing times or fast running speeds. It is common
sense that amputation and prosthetic legs impair force generation. Rapid
leg swing times can result from learning and training but can only
partially compensate for the force impairment incurred by current,
passive-elastic running prostheses."
There's a deal of food for thought in the opposed cases. It's a
continuing scientific debate in which we're very from consensus.
Conjecture is very far from proof, & if substantial data contradict that
conjecture, then the data may carry more weight.
So shouldn't we hold, before passing definitive judgement, until the
point is reached at which disable athletes on prostheses do actually
surpass top able-bodied performances?
Meanwhile, should national squads be luring performers hitherto seen as
able-bodied into their adaptive rowing crews?
It seems to me that Pistorius, & others like him, are real competitors,
determined to prove themselves among the best with no quarter given. In
contrast, adaptive rowing should think twice about seeking to pack
adaptive rowing with athletes who disabilities may be marginal in rowing
terms.
The latter is not the same as the infamous case of the Spanish
basketball team which feigned mental disability when all they had was a
grave collective moral impairment, but it would be as well to give it
some careful thought.
That thought hit me hard between the eyes yesterday, as I watched a
number of clearly affluent & able-bodied people getting into cars they
had parked in supermarket parking bays that were clearly marked as being
for disabled persons only (for which in the UK the cars must prominently
display a blue badge). Because it was pouring with rain, every disabled
bay was full! Some do this routinely, & all do it because a) those
restricted bays are closest to the shop door & b) they don't give a toss
about the inconvenience they thus cause to the genuinely disabled (as I
found when questioning one such abuser).
Dave Sill
> Dave Sill wrote:
>> On 12/04/09 18:28, mruscoe wrote:
>>>
>>> http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/short/01238.2009v2
>>
>> "We conclude that the moment in athletic history when engineered limbs
>> outperform biological limbs has already passed."
>>
>> That says it all, really.
>
Not intentionally. I didn't realize that the "paper" was actually four
papers glued together and I stopped reading at the first set of references.
> So shouldn't we hold, before passing definitive judgement, until the
> point is reached at which disable athletes on prostheses do actually
> surpass top able-bodied performances?
Wait until the unfairness pendulum actually swings into the able-bodied
realm, when it's clearly a possibility and we can take steps now to
prevent it? Why? Two wrongs don't make a right, and giving amputees an
unfair advantage over non-amputees won't make things better.
> Meanwhile, should national squads be luring performers hitherto seen as
> able-bodied into their adaptive rowing crews?
Why not? If they meet requirements for adaptive rowing, why shouldn't
they be allowed to compete in adaptive rowing? Maybe the requirements
for the adaptive team are too low, but that's not a problem that the
athletes can fix.
If a disabled rower makes the national able-bodied team should that
preclude him from rowing on the national adaptive team?
-Dave
Tinus
It may not be a strong requirement but it is a characteristic. Sure
moderate use may not be harmful but that isn't much use if intense use
is harmful (and enhancing). Cafeine is an example of something which
is not harmful (at least not at the dose at which it may be useful for
athletes). Of course doping is more complex topic. Cafeine is also a
very common substance and that may play a role as well.
Tinus
> point is reached at which disable athletes on prostheses do actually
> surpass top able-bodied performances?
I believe two premises are discussed here and they should be treated
separately. Arguments against one should not be used as an argument
against the other one.
- If prosthetics are better then nature then they should not be used
in able-bodied athletes sports competitions.
- Pistorius has (or might have) an artificial leg which gives him an
advantage over a natural leg.
=> Pistorius should not compete in a sports competition for able-
bodied athletes.
It almost sounds like your are using arguments against the validity of
the second premiss (which I agree are strong) to counter the first
premiss as well. I may hope that everyone can be settled as far as the
first premiss is concerned. It may be or not be a hypothetical case at
this moment but that shouldn't change the arguments for the validity
of that premiss. Taking it to the extreme, if someone would put an
engine in his limbs most would not regard it as fair (just like many
other sorts of technical principles are forbidden and seen as
increasing unfairness, e.g. altering the surface of the boat such that
it changes the natural properties of the water). If one agrees with
that than one at least agrees that there is a certain limit to
prosthetics.
Besides this logic I can imagine another reason why IAAF would not
like Pistorius to compete. It would be a precedent for other athletes
to compete as well. A single athlete per lane track competition may be
feasible to be held including athletes with prosthetics but I can
imagine problems if athletes with prosthetics will try to make a case
for the 800 meters as well (which is a lot more rough). If Pistorius
is allowed to do 400 meters why can't other athletes do 800 meters.