I’m no scientist, but my understanding is that it is hardly cut and dried.
I don’t doubt you could provide all sorts of advantages. Human parts are weak and slow. A stone spear is a prosthetic that is superior to our fists.
I contend that it’s effectively impossible to engineer something that is exactly the same as his natural legs would be. So he shouldn’t compete.
I don’t think amputees are lesser people. I just don’t want a guy with a machine nudging him a few hundredths of a second faster than an un-damaged man could do.
If you could do that kind of comparison, I think I’d agree. In the real world, if Pistorius had two complete legs and equal motivation and training to what he has now, he’d be faster. I realize this isn’t a control group, but I think it needs to be pointed out that in the 400 meter semifinals he raced against 24 elite runners with roughly equal training and two complete legs, and 22 of them beat him.
All arguments have been stated already, so I’m just going to say I’m with people who don’t understand how a number of posters came to the conclusion that he should be allowed to compete
No. The Olympics are not something you “graduate to” after doing too well at the Paralympics. How is this even a debate? It’s asinine that he’s being allowed to compete.
It’s cool what he’s managed to accomplish, but no. There’s no room for debate in my mind.
This debate was long since settled, especially for the IOC. I can guarantee you he was allowed to run because he WAS slower than the field (but he was great for ratings)
Ultimately that is what the Olympics have turned into, a side show of sporting events with a main stage of everyone’s backstory.
Because there’s something ridiculous about the claim that replacing a leg with something that’s less effective than a leg is an advantage. Or at least that’s how it seems to me.
That’s a claim made by precisely nobody. The argument is that he should be allowed to race in the Olympics because his running times are comparable to those of able-bodied sprinters.
It’s a different race, but it’s one Pistorius would be able to compete in just as well as able-bodied runners. In that case, everyone would be using prosthetics. Of course, people would still complain Pistorius has an unfair advantage in that he uses false feet all the time instead of just for a race.
The other runners don’t seem nearly as upset by this as some other people. Why is that?
His prostethics are not intended to give him an unfair advantage but rather to give him a fair replacement for his missing feet. If that’s an issue let’s discuss how to give him that fair replacement rather than a blanket ban regardless of whether there’s an advantage or disadvantage.
You’re leaving out an important factor. The prostheses may very well be less effective than legs when you take in to account all the things a leg is supposed to do. But when you restrict the use to one thing—running—it is quite possible that it is more effective, not less.
As an example. let’s say the even is the triple long jump. Now imagine prothesis that are somewhat like pogo sticks. They’d need a new pit.
So, if his times were a tad faster then the fastest guy, would you disallow him? A lot faster? A hundreth of a second slower? Where do you draw the line?
We call those “eye glasses” and they do allow people with less than perfect vision use them to bring their eyesight up to (but no better) than those with naturally perfect vision when they compete as sharpshooters.
We can come up with a way to calibrate artificial feet/legs so they can do the same.
Or are you saying that people who uses eyeglasses “aren’t playing the same game” as other sharpshooters and should [del]go sit in the back of the bus[/del] compete in the paralympics instead?
But the scientists (Disclaimer: I know Hugh Herr personally, he’s a double amputee as well) have done studies and there’s no evidence that they give any advantage. In absence of any such evidence, the sensible decision would be (IMO) to let him run. His times are the best evidence that the Cheetah legs don’t give him an advantage, and there is lots of evidence that they are a good but not equivalent substitute for real legs.
So, no, it’s not cut and dried, but the race times pretty much make that moot. If it comes to the point where it appears technology is superseding human abilities (like with the full body swim suits) there will be a ruling to disallow them. Yes, it’s tricky at times, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to figure it out.
I’ve hiked with Hugh, on very similar legs to the one’s that Oscar Pistorius uses, and while they are much better than static legs they simply aren’t equivalent to human legs. Hugh is also an amazing and accomplished athlete, and can do things that I could never do on a climbing wall with his bionic legs, but they’re no equivalent to flesh and blood legs. One place where they are an advantage is when he needs longer legs for certain routes, he can adjust their length. But that’s not what the Cheetah legs that Pistorius is using do for him.
These are prosthetics designed for running, and the data says they are not more effective. Frankly it’s not hard to understand why. We can make good substitutes for limbs, but they’re not the limbs that evolved with our bodies.
I’m wondering if my earlier sarcasm went undetected. Oscar Pistorius is not the Six Million Dollar Man or Inspector Gadget, and his running blades are not actually comparable to pogo sticks, wings, wheels, or rockets. Those are all hopeless exaggerations that don’t show much understanding of what he actually uses.
No, I wouldn’t disqualify him for winning. If it became obvious that humans with two complete legs couldn’t compete with guys who had prosthetics, I’d draw the line there. Right now the best amputee sprinter ever is somewhere around the 20th best in the world at his best event, and more complex data aside, that’s a pretty good hint that he’s not getting an unfair advantage. When the high-tech swimsuits were rolled out, world records started falling just about immediately because they conferred an enormous advantage. The governing body of the sport also managed to ban those swimsuits without banning all swimwear. So I think if anything like that actually develops, it can be dealt with. Pistorius deserves credit for his achievements, and he’s not doing it because he has prosthetic legs that are better that the natural version.
Personally I don’t care a whole lot about records and such. I think the Olympics should be about human performance, and if our technology has reached a point where prosthetics begin to outperform the natural, we should be celebrating that as a triumph of human ingenuity and achievement.
So I think he should be allowed to run. And if more double amputee athletes show up and begin to dominate one or a few sports, so what? I think this would go a very long way in promoting the acceptance and equal treatment of all kinds of disabled people in many societies.
This is kinda like saying, “She beat all the girls, so let’s let her play on the boys’ team.” As far as I know that’s happened quite rarely.
If some able-bodied runner shattered the gold record would all the other competitors complain? They probably would. (“He used drugs!” “He has a propitious last name!”)
How is this different from allowing paraplegic basketball players to compete against able-bodied athletes in Olympic basketball, though? It’s merely a coincidence that prosthetic leg technology (unlike the wheelchair) doesn’t seem to yet surpassed the human body’s natural capability.
I get that it was a publicity stunt and done to recognize his efforts; the fact that he just happened to lose due to prosthetic technology doesn’t make it right or fair, though. What would have happened if this guy had won? Would it be okay to disqualify him then? That’s not fair either. And if he had won and they didn’t disqualify him, can you not think of any less-principled nations that might purposely amputate their athletes for the express purpose of getting gold medals? coughNorth Koreacough
Whether the game is basketball or sprinting, the real point is that prosthetics and wheelchairs make it so that disabled people are playing a completely different game than able-bodied people. That they allowed him to compete was as ridiculous, to me, as allowing paraplegic wheelchairs on Olympic basketball teams would be.
All this talk of Pistorius being “kicked out” or disqualified from the paralympics is nonesense - he wasn’t and isn’t. He’s fully intending to compete in the paraplympics after the Olympics are over.
He had qualifying times. I don’t see how that makes it a “stunt”. If he didn’t have sufficiently fast times and they let him in that would be a stunt but that’s not what happened.
He would have got a gold medal and we would have heard the South African national anthem.
That would have to be one HELL of a lead he’d need to win by to justify that.
To review:
He doesn’t win every race he enters. Far from it. As recently seen
When he does win it’s by a small margin comparable to the margin by which able-bodied runners win.
Even if some government was willing to consider such a drastic move, even with modern prosthetics it is far, far more likely you’ll wind up with a double-amputee who runs markedly worse than before, or perhaps can’t run at all, than you’ll wind up manufacturing a champion. Pistorius has been using aritifical legs since he was around 18 months old - he’s had a lifetime to learn to balance on stilts. I’m sure there are some extraordinary people out there would could learn the trick in just a few years, but it’s not a universal talent.
I think one element is getting lost here. Yeah, he’s not winning. But what if his training would have made him the 1000th best runner in the world and because of the legs he’s 20th.
The very fact that there are so few double amputees makes it astronomically unlikely that he’s one of the 20 fastest men on Earth.
And the science is hardly settled, his legs pump faster than anyone elses:
Except that’s not what usually happens - usually someone shows up with new equipment and the decision is made afterwards.
And if the prostheses are too light, add weights until it’s no longer an advantage.
What gets me are the guys with one artificial leg and one natural leg who gripe about how Pistorius has an unfair advantage because he’s got *matching *legs. This guy can’t catch a break, can he?
What does catching a break have to do with anything? We’re talking about world-class athletes here, not kindergarten T-ball where everybody gets a trophy. Fellow Paralympian competitors may bitch about how he’s “too good” to be in the Paralympics (as if there were such a thing), but he indubitably *belongs *in the Paralympics. I’ve never watched them before, but I believe Paralympic hopefuls train just as hard as Olympic hopefuls train. And, while I don’t doubt this guy has trained his everloving ASS off, so do all the other Olympic hopefuls who don’t get into the Olympics every year. *Anyone *who endorses giving this guy a break sounds like they are essentially advocating for special treatment based on his disability. That isn’t how the Olympics work, ok?
