Pistorius claim exposes double standards on the track

Last Sunday, Paralympic favourite Oscar Pistorius was beaten to the gold medal in the T44 200-metre final by Brazilian Alan Fonteles Oliveira. Pistorius called the race unfair, saying Oliveira ran on excessively long blades that boosted his stride length.

To comply with regulations laid down by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), athletes’ prostheses must not convey an “unrealistic enhancement”. But working out exactly where enhancement begins is tricky. Officials can use limb measurements from able-bodied non-disabled people, and guess how long the legs of double amputees should be by looking at their body measurements, such as the distance between the sternum and the fingertips.

To give themselves the best advantage within the rules, double amputees are likely to pick prostheses as long as is legally allowed. Oliveira increased the length of his by 4 centimetres three weeks ago. Despite the extension, however, The Guardian points out that Pistorius’s strides were 2.2 metres long on average, whereas Oliveira’s only averaged 2 metres.

“I can see where [Pistorius] is coming from,” says David James, a sports engineer at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. “You can tell by looking at [the athletes] that they can’t really stand up – it seems they’ve taken their heights to unnatural levels.”

The IPC stood by its decision to approve Oliveira’s blades. All the athletes participating in the race were checked before its start, the IPC said in a statement on 3 September. “All were within the regulations outlined in the IPC Athletics Classification Handbook,” the committee said. “The problem isn’t [Oliveira’s] prosthesis,” says Graham Arthur, a member of the IPC classification committee. “That’s the way sport works – it’s unpredictable. On the night, [Oliveira] just performed better.” Nonetheless, the committee has agreed to talk to Pistorius at a later date about his concerns.

Double standards?

Others have less time for Pistorius’s argument, pointing out that the sprinter is thought to have has deliberately kept his blades shorter than the maximum limit in order to also qualify for the Olympics. Pistorius had previously argued that his blades don’t give him an advantage over his able-bodied competitors.

“Unfortunately, Pistorius has invalidated his reasons for being able to run in the Olympics as well as the Paralympics,” says Steve Haake, also at Sheffield Hallam University. “To run in the Olympics, his team claimed that he had no advantage over non-amputees. Pistorius is now saying that you just need to lengthen your prosthetics to go faster – something non-amputees cannot do.”

James agrees: “Pistorius was given the green light to run in the Olympics on the basis that his blades give him no advantage,” he says. “He seems to be devaluing his own argument.”




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Maybe I’m Mis-reading Or Something. . .

Tue Sep 04 17:31:36 BST 2012 by Pete

But surely Pistorius is not contradicting himself? He kept his blades short to comply with Olympic regulations, and pointed out that the Paralympic regulations allow for longer (performance enhancing) fittings? By keeping his short, he had no advantage. His argument is that the upper limits allowed in Paralympic athletics *do* allow for artificial performance advantages.

Maybe I’m Mis-reading Or Something. . .

Tue Sep 04 18:24:43 BST 2012 by John

His(Oscar’s) choice! If he/his team had the money for even longer ones too, perhaps he should have had longer ones designed for paralympics (but less likely those would be ok for olympics) and then had the olympics-suitable pair too.

Also, some athletes pushed the rules harder, he chose to play it safe. Maybe he went slower ‘cos of that, maybe he just didn’t have the talent/upper leg muscles to win. Stop complaining!

Maybe I’m Mis-reading Or Something. . .

Tue Sep 04 18:49:49 BST 2012 by DeanO

Oscar’s legs are the right length for his body to allow him not to have an unfair advantage over normal humans. and despite Oliveira being quite clearly smaller (see them on the podium together) he has those longer blades.

Yes Oliveira deserves the gold this time, but this issue has got to be resolved for the sake of the single leg amputees who are stuck with what they’ve got because of their pesky fixed length human leg

Maybe I’m Mis-reading Or Something. . .

Wed Sep 05 03:46:48 BST 2012 by Dann

Given the increasing incidence of ‘boosting’ amongst wheelchair-bound paralympians, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if single-amputee runners began to amputate their remaining limbs in order to lengthen their blades.

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