Comments on The Blade Runner
South Africa, and the sports world at large have had Blade Runner fever this week. The emotional response to the news that Oscar Pistorius, a below the knee double amputee, can compete against able bodied athletes has been widespread and quite touching, with much of the international press in agreement that it is great thing for sport. I am acutely aware of this sentiment but I do think there are some larger issues that need some examining here.
Firstly, let’s get some facts, which have not been well reported or have been generally misconstrued, out of the way. Firstly the banning of Pistorius was based on a study by Professor Peter Brüggemann at the German Sport University in Cologne. The common misconception of this study is that it was very narrow and did not take into account the various intricacies of the case. In fact the findings of the report are various and broad. A summary of the results are as follows:
- Pistorius was able to run with his prosthetic blades at the same speed as the able-bodied sprinters with about 25% less energy expenditure [a 25% lower VO2 uptake]. As soon as a given speed is reached, running with the prosthetics needs less additional energy than running with natural limbs.
- Once the physiological potential of Oscar Pistorius and the able-bodied control athletes had been estimated, using three different methods, it is clear that Pistorius’ potential was not higher than that of the controls, even though their performance results were similar.
- The biomechanical analysis demonstrated major differences in the sprint mechanics used by a below-knee amputee using prosthetics when compared to athletes with natural legs. The maximum vertical ground reaction forces and the vertical impulses are different in a highly significant way and the amount of energy return of the prosthetic blade have never been reported for a human muscle driven ankle joint in sprint running.
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