ESPN reports:
The IAAF ruled Monday that
double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius is ineligible to compete in
the Beijing Olympics because his prosthetic racing blades give him
a clear competitive advantage.The International Association of Athletics Federations had twice
postponed the ruling, but the executive council said the South
African runner’s curved, prosthetic "Cheetah" blades were
considered a technical aid in violation of the rules."As a result, Oscar Pistorius is ineligible to compete in
competitions organized under IAAF Rules," the IAAF said in a
statement.Pistorius, known as the "blade runner," announced last week
that he would appeal any adverse decision, including taking the
case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne,
Switzerland."The natural feeling from our side would be to appeal the
verdict and see what avenues we can take forward," Pistorius’
agent, Peet van Zyl, told the BBC after Monday’s verdict. "Oscar
wants to prove that he isn’t getting an advantage."
In case it isn’t clear, this guy doesn’t have feet, or at least the kind most of us are born with. He runs on artificial feet. See the picture here.
Can this distinction between "fair" and "unfair," "natural" and "unnatural" persist? I doubt it.
Share
{ 31 comments }
Agreed. I don't buy all the moralizing over steroids either.
From the article: "The natural feeling from our side would be to appeal the verdict and see what avenues we can take forward," Pistorius' agent, Peet van Zyl, told the BBC after Monday's verdict. "Oscar wants to prove that he isn't getting an advantage."
There's a statesman for you. He can't win if his client gets an advantage from prosthetic feet; therefore, his client doesn't get an advantage from prosthetic feet. You wonder why the guy bothers with his prosthetics or why he'd bother improving them.
Let's say I clamped such carbon fiber springs onto my legs just below my knees. I'd make them long enough that my (flesh-and-bone) feet would just dangle in the air above the "foot" part of the springs.
Do you think I should be able to compete in the Olympics wearing such equipment?
Let's say I clamped such carbon fiber springs onto my legs just below my knees. I'd make them long enough that my (flesh-and-bone) feet would just dangle in the air above the "foot" part of the springs.
Do you think I should be able to compete in the Olympics wearing such equipment?
Delurking,
My understanding from an article about this in Wired Magazine is that the weight from carrying around your lower legs kills whatever advantage the carbon fiber feet give you. The possibility of hypotheticals remain, but that one doesn't work.
Another thing to consider is the pernicious effect on the sport as a whole. If this becomes the only way to get performance enhancing equipment into the sport, don't be surprised if we start seeing more athletes having their lower legs removed.
OneEyedMan might have some unfair foresight in this debate. The incentive effects are the dominant concern, whether one is talking about mechanical or chemical (e.g., steroidal) advantages.
Very few people are ready to embrace androids geared toward running or swimming or hitting long balls as the eventual norm. The debate over natural vs. engineered advantages is only going to get more intense, but it is a debate with no pat answers.
Wikipedia shows Pistorius' personal bests vs. actual mens Olympic gold times.
In short, Pistorius is (relatively) SLOW, a second to two-and-a-half seconds behind times that are themselves likely to be beaten in '08:
100 m: 10.91 vs 9.85
200 m: 21.58 vs 19.79
400 m: 46.56 vs 44.00
They should let Pistorius compete; if so, he will represent South Africa in '08, but he will lose badly in the 100, 200, and/or the 400.
Tyson Gay, Afasa Powell, and Jeremy Wariner will leave him in the dust.
You are late to the party. Wheelchair marathons can be done in about 1:35, as compared to about 2 hours when running. Clearly they should be declared winners.
On the other hand, cyclists should beat those times handily, while contenders on motorbikes ought to do better still. After we get rid of the artificial distinctions of fairness/unfairness and natural/unnatural, we should thus see great progress.
Engineers are a creative lot. I have little doubt that such prosthetics, if they are not already, could easily be made superior to organics for sprinting purposes. There may not be much call for that now, but making them legal for Olympic competition would likely bring millions of dollars in research towards the task of winning an Olympic event. Bragging rights anybody?
delurking: "Do you think I should be able to compete in the Olympics wearing such equipment?"
Sure. The games would be more interesting then. Running competitions are awfully dull. How about anything that doesn't increase the runner's energy? That seems fair enough to me and it allows this guy to compete. Definitely. I'm all for it.
OneEyedMan: "My understanding from an article about this in Wired Magazine is that the weight from carrying around your lower legs kills whatever advantage the carbon fiber feet give you."
Are lighter runners required to wear weights? Would that be fairer?
Martin Brock wrote:
"Sure. The games would be more interesting then. Running competitions are awfully dull. How about anything that doesn't increase the runner's energy? That seems fair enough to me and it allows this guy to compete. Definitely. I'm all for it."
How about a bicycle? Then it wouldn't be running, would it? Obviously, if we are going to have distinctions between running and cycling, there have to be some rules limiting what qualifies as "running".
I'm not saying that a sport where competitors bound along on mechanical assemblies should not exist. It would be a different sport, though.
The event where man's reflexes and mechanical advantage are integrated to cover a short distance in the least time is called drag racing.
Heck, some auto racers have complained that Danica Patrick gets an unfair advantage due to her size/weight.
You are late to the party. Wheelchair marathons can be done in about 1:35
Even faster if the wheelchair is placed inside a late model corvette…
Anyway, it seems to me that sports is full of arbitrary and non-arbitrary restrictions on performance and equipment.
If you race walk or swim the breaststroke, you just can't go fast as fast as possible. You have to meet certain arbitrary standard in the way you go fast.
Baseball players have arbitrary limits on how big their bat can be, how much it can weigh and how high the pine tar goes up. Hockey goalies can't make their pads too big. Race cars have restrictor plates on their engines, and must limit the drag effects on their cars.
Competitive running seems to be about answering a relatively specific question – how fast can a man or woman run 100M on a flat path, without any machinery. The thrill of breaking records comes, in large part, from the knowledge that we can compare the achievements of today's runners against those of last year, or last millenium. They are separated only by reaching new limits with flesh and willpower.
Now of course it gets more complicated. The running shoes are fancier, the costumes more aerodynamic, etc. People have more protein in their diets, they are taller, they have the benefit of arthroscopic surgery to help them get past injuries, etc. etc.
But still the feats of today seem to have been achieved with roughly the same ingredients as the feats of yesteryear. Flesh and willpower. Even with fancy running shoes it still seems plausible to compare runners across decades and centuries.
No-one finds it particularly interesting to compare the records of sprinters and motorcyclists. No-one finds it stimulating to compare high-jumpers and pole-vaulters. It is the constraints that make it all interesting.
Constraints make a lot of things compelling. Experts in product development are showing that focusing upon constraints often yields much more creativity than open-ended brainstorming. TV and cinema writers face innumerable constraints and their work often comes out the richer for for it. Sprinting is made interesting by the fact that one can't use rollerblades, or a motorcycle, or prosthetic legs.
To follow up on my own post -
I think that in the future people will most likely have "drug olympics" and drug-free olympics. Perhaps there will be various tiers of prosthetic and cyborgian olympics. But I think the most popular events will continue to be those that (at least claim to) not allow drugs or prostheses. In other words, events subject to the same basic constraints the ancients faced. We turn a blind eye to high-protein diets, knee reconstructions and springy shoes, because they don't entirely puncture our sense of continuity with the past, of wo/men striving against the same challenges and constraints. I think drugs and devices fall beyond that realm.
Oh, and I forgot a few of my favorite ummmm "technologies." Swimming. Suits used to be a "drag." Then for a few years, at least for the girls, no suits made for a far superior… ummm, contest. Then tech caught up and now suits improve performance over au natural. I shaved my legs in college. Not just for swimming to improve speed but taping up for rugby after a minor injury. Body modification? Medical necessity versus unfair advantage? Heck, steroids are often a medical necessity.
delurking: "How about a bicycle? Then it wouldn't be running, would it?"
No, it wouldn't, and we can agree on a set of rules preserving a sense of "running", but all games have rules, and the rules are never "fair" if "fair" means that no player ever has an advantage over another.
delurking: "Obviously, if we are going to have distinctions between running and cycling, there have to be some rules limiting what qualifies as "running"."
Yes, but the distinction needn't disqualify this guy from a running competition.
delurking: "I'm not saying that a sport where competitors bound along on mechanical assemblies should not exist. It would be a different sport, though."
Changing the rules doesn't bother me. If some runners without prosthetics don't want to compete with this guy, that's their prerogative. It's only a game. These guys aren't even paid to run fast, and if they were, I'd be doubly convinced that this guy should be entitled to compete with them.
Rob Dawg: "Medical necessity versus unfair advantage? Heck, steroids are often a medical necessity."
Some guys are just born with higher levels of some hormones. I don't call that "unfair", but the idea that supplementing a lower level is "unfair" seems incredibly unfair. Do we ban contact lenses in athletic competitions? Why aren't these artificial aids unfair?
Martin Brock wrote:
"Some guys are just born with higher levels of some hormones. I don't call that "unfair", but the idea that supplementing a lower level is "unfair" seems incredibly unfair. Do we ban contact lenses in athletic competitions? Why aren't these artificial aids unfair?"
Society has always recognized that champions are champions due to a combination of their innate characteristics and their efforts, not due to their efforts alone. Thus, it is pointless to quibble over the fact that some people are born with a body type suited to a particular type of competition.
It would be ridiculous in the extreme to try to equalize everyone's genetic variability in every field of athletic competition. The question is where you draw the line.
Many elite athletes, when asked "would you give up ten years of your life if you could be a champion now?", answer yes. Do you think it is a good idea to change the rules so that the incentive is for athletes to cut off their feet and bolt on carbon fiber springs?
To answer your final question, contact lenses and glasses are legal because they are everyday objects used by most people, competing or not. Making them legal does not provide an incentive to mutilate one's body.
delurking: "Do you think it is a good idea to change the rules so that the incentive is for athletes to cut off their feet and bolt on carbon fiber springs?"
I think the question is incredibly presumptuous. Has anyone ever cut off their feet to bolt on carbon fiber springs?
I'm a skater. My skating suffers considerably when I change wheels, because wheels deform over time, and the deformed shape seems to enhance certain moves. The front and rear wheels wear faster for example, so after a time, they're smaller, resulting in "rockered" wheels. Many skaters, including me, now deliberately rocker the wheels by installing slightly smaller wheels in the front and rear. That's called "experience" and "progress"; however, some people prefer unrockered wheels and rotate wheels to avoid the rockering instead.
I'm also a skydiver, and any experienced skydiver will tell you that different canopies have very different performance characteristics; therefore, changing canopies can be perilous for risky maneuvers, particularly landing. I've seen a guy severely injured, very nearly killed, while learning to use a new canopy.
If the world's fastest runner on natural feet cut off his feet to bolt on carbon fiber springs, he'd become the world's slowest runner overnight, and he'd then spend much time, probably years, learning to run fast again, and he might never surpass his speed on natural feet. I have a hard time believing that athletes would stand in line for this procedure, but they might experiment with less radical enhancements of their feet, and this experimentation could benefit everyone ultimately.
delurking: "To answer your final question, contact lenses and glasses are legal because they are everyday objects used by most people, competing or not. Making them legal does not provide an incentive to mutilate one's body."
This "incentive" is a figment of your imagination. Oscar Pistorius' need to run on artificial feet is very real. He certainly uses them every day, competing or not.
It pains me to mention this, but apparently beggars in India will voluntarily amputate their legs in order to increase revenue for begging. As for the larger issue, I confess that I'm pretty stumped- but once cybernetics can help a regular joe like me get a leg up on the competition, I'd jump at the chance . . .
Frankly, if you want to cut your feet off and train for thousands of hours over years to compete for a medal you couldn't see on ebay for a hundred bucks, that you probably won't win anyway, I wouldn't stop you. The amputated feet are a small part of your cost really, and you might prefer them when you get used to them. Maybe others want to protect you from this choice, but I don't.
You can cut your willy off and have your tits enlarged too. It's a free country, sort of.
This just seems like one of those things on which there's no need to force a consensus.
If private "Athletic Federation A" wants to sanction runners with prosthetics that's their right to decide.
If private "Athletic Federation B" wants to take the position prosthetics won't be allowed in their sanctioned races, that's their right to decide.
I have the right to prefer or ignore one or both.
Martin Brock wrote:
"I think the question is incredibly presumptuous. Has anyone ever cut off their feet to bolt on carbon fiber springs?"
Why is this presumptuous? Motocrossers have undergone risky surgeries to release veins in their arms to reduce "arm pump". Such things are not banned by their organizing authority, so it happens.
"This "incentive" is a figment of your imagination. Oscar Pistorius' need to run on artificial feet is very real. He certainly uses them every day, competing or not."
The guy was born with a condition that makes him less able to run than others. There are plenty of competitive events where he can compete. Why should the rules be changed for this particular event, just for him?
There are lots of people who can't run at Olympic-caliber speeds, solely due to characteristics they were born with. Should they get to use special equipment in Olympic competition to make them run better?
delurking: "Why is this presumptuous? Motocrossers have undergone risky surgeries to release veins in their arms to reduce "arm pump". Such things are not banned by their organizing authority, so it happens."
It's presumptuous, because you presume it without having observed it. Regardless, if someone prefers artificial feet to natural feet, that's his business. We now know that they aren't an impediment to running. I assume they don't impede walking either. Maybe we'll all have them someday. Enough of us wear contact lenses.
delurking: "The guy was born with a condition that makes him less able to run than others. There are plenty of competitive events where he can compete."
I don't know if he was born with it or not, but it doesn't prevent his participating in a running competition.
delurking: "Why should the rules be changed for this particular event, just for him?"
The question is: why not? Just for him and others like him and because the added freedom to innovate would make the sport more interesting, to me at least. Now, I don't want anyone cutting their feet off for my entertainment, but I don't want men having sex change operations for my sake either. That's just none of my business. I wouldn't forbid them to do it.
delurking: "There are lots of people who can't run at Olympic-caliber speeds, solely due to characteristics they were born with. Should they get to use special equipment in Olympic competition to make them run better?"
Shouldn't they? I have no problem with it. Every game has rules, and most sports have artificial equipment. I don't propose to forbid people with natural feet from racing only people with natural feet, if that's what they want. We have rugby and American football. Different basketball players wear different shoes. Baseball players have their choice of bats within limits. I see no problem with it at all.
I understand his desire to compete, but I believe he should not be allowed. If we take this discussion on a different angle and lets say he lost an arm. now the engineers design a 3 foot device with a strap much like a sling shot. now we enter the javelin throw he would be throwing world class records. would that be fair to the people limited by arms
We'll never agree on the "fairness" of it, because the word means nothing but "I think so".
First of all, Cheetah legs don't have springs in them, as someone mentioned above. It is a solid curved piece of carbon fiber attached to the piece that his leg connects to. Also, one could argue that Pistorius is at a disadvantage because he must stand straight up before he can move forward, unlike other runners and he can't create any power or thrust with his calfs, like other runners do. IAAF is banning him because his legs are too long in their opinion, but they do not put any restrictions of height or stride length for able-bodied athletes. The New York Times website has an excellent article on whether Cheetah legs really give Pistorius an advantage.
From the NY times article:
"Pistorius, 21, was born without fibulas and had both legs amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old. "
Martin Brock wrote:
"It's presumptuous, because you presume it without having observed it. Regardless, if someone prefers artificial feet to natural feet, that's his business."
I have not said we should throw Pistorius in jail for having cut off his legs and replaced them with prostheses. I'm saying it is reasonable for there to exist an Olympic event called running where the rules limit what mechanical equipment can be used.
Martin Brock wrote:
"delurking: "Why should the rules be changed for this particular event, just for him?"
The question is: why not? Just for him and others like him and because the added freedom to innovate would make the sport more interesting, to me at least. Now, I don't want anyone cutting their feet off for my entertainment, but I don't want men having sex change operations for my sake either. That's just none of my business. I wouldn't forbid them to do it."
People already are free to innovate. Amputees already innovate with their prostheses in many ways, and compete with them.
There is lots of innovation in the area of how people can propel themselves along more efficiently than walking or running (bicycles, scooters, bouncy shoes, pogo sticks, wheelchairs, roller skates, etc.). There are lots of competitions where people can use such equipment. There are even Olympic events for some of them. Why turn the Olympic running event into another event that already exists elsewhere?
So he cut his own legs off when he was 11 months old, probably just so he could run in the Olympics. That's it. I surrender. You win.