For the International Athletics Federation, carbon prostheses are an aid for amputee runners. Scientists prove the opposite: they do not advantage them over able-bodied athletes.
- This study brings together the largest sample of data ever collected from elite runners who have undergone bilateral leg amputation.
- Aerobic capacity is the ability of the lungs, heart, and circulatory system to efficiently transport oxygen to muscles during physical activity.
- The authors encourage other researchers to publish more data to allow the public to form an informed opinion on the subject.
In 2012, South African athlete Oscar Pistorius made history: he became the first disabled athlete to participate in the Olympic Games. Nicknamed “blade runner“, the runner manages to maintain himself until the semi-finals of 400 meters against the able-bodied athletes. But the carbon prostheses which allow the athlete to run sows debate in the middle of athletics. After this Oscar race Pistorius, the International Association of Athletics Federations decides that in future athletes using “aids mechanical” must prove that their blades do not give them a competitive advantage. American scientists have done it for them, in a study published in Royal Society Open Science.
A treadmill and track study
Blake Leeper, an athlete born without legs, was declared ineligible for the Tokyo Olympics last year due to a “advantage presumed“. He had previously participated in this research. In 2018, he visited the biomechanics laboratory of Alena Grabowski, the study’s lead author, for a series of tests. That summer, he ran the 400 meters in 44.42 seconds, breaking Oscar Pistorius’ record On the treadmill and track, researchers measured Blake Leeper’s acceleration off the starting blocks, top speed along the straights and around curves, speed to aerobic capacity and sprint endurance.For these different measures, they collected the available data from elite bilateral amputees and compared them with those from non-amputee athletes.
No advantage for runners equipped with blades
By comparing the performance data of Blake Leeper, Oscar Pistorius and six other bilateral amputee sprinters, with those of the world’s best non-amputee sprinters on five performance measures, the research found no benefit to athletes running with carbon blades. “Many assumptions have been made about the use of prostheses and performance without data to support them, explains Alena Grabowski. With this study, we show that the use of running prostheses does not provide any competitive advantage over 400 meters compared to biological legs.” On the contrary, amputee athletes are 40% slower when leaving the starting blocks, compared to the others. They had a 19% slower speed at aerobic capacity and were 1-3% slower in curves compared to non-amputees. “We found that no athlete with prosthetic legs ever performed better than non-amputee elite athletes in laboratory experiments in any measure related to sprint performance“, specifies the co-author Owen Beck.
Results ignored by the International Athletics Federation
In 2020, the findings of this study were presented to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but this did not allow Blake Leeper to participate in World Athletics events, the current name of the International Athletics Federation. She felt that the prostheses made him too big: they gave him a leg length of 104 cm. However, the authors of this study point out that they have previously shown that size makes no difference in terms of maximum sprint speed. With this new research, they are hopeful that World Athletics will reexamine the data available on these prostheses. “I hope this will get people to really question the rules put in place that prevent athletes with disabilities from competing, even when they have shown, through science, that they can compete fairly.”says Alena Grabowski.
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