Oscar Pistorius

[simoni]

I've always felt that the "mechanical" angle of analysis isn't the full story.

He has a lot less muscle to supply blood to and remove waste products from as well as a 0% injury risk below his knee. This is not open to debate.

Surely massive advantages ignoring everything else?

There's far too much room for doubt here - he shouldn't be allowed to compete.

 

[Red Rick]

The Olympics are for the fastest people. If the fastest man happens to be a man with no legs, so be it, let him compete, once they start running under 43s we'll start questioning further

 

[eric_vv]

The Olympics are for the fastest people. If the fastest man happens to be a man with no legs, so be it, let him compete, once they start running under 43s we'll start questioning further

The olympics are for the fastest people not the fastest technology. You don't ban someone because he is the fastest on the 400 m, you ban him because you believe it isn't a fair competition, regardless of the actual result.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

The Olympics are for the fastest people. If the fastest man happens to be a man with no legs, so be it, let him compete, once they start running under 43s we'll start questioning further.

As I see it, that's inevitable. At some point the technology is going to be so good that paralympic times will be faster than able bodied times. It's just inevitable. While this isn't the same as letting a guy with a toe blister ride a motorcycle in the Tour de France, at some point a line has to be drawn. To me, while it was interesting to see Oscar run, and I'm sure he inspired many people, that line should be drawn now.

I almost think another thing is at play here. By having Oscar in the Olympics, it draws more attention to the fact that there are some impressive paralympic athletes, and he's the best of them. It draws some curiosity in folks, and with the Paralympic games coming up, it's likely to make it the most watched year ever. While the IPC isn't beholden to the IOC, the IOC does oversee the related Special World Olympics. So someone perhaps at the IOC is looking at a "win-win" here. Food for thought, that's all.

 

[Cyivel]

So Oscar isn't happy with the guy that beat him in the 200m, says his blades are too long.

http://www.espn.co.uk/london-olympics-2012/sport/story/168245.html

Here is the video of it, the comeback is a bit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHGi0sEBu-I

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

as well as a 0% injury risk below his knee.

As a below knee amputee, I can assure you there is plenty of scope for injury below knee. The most obvious are related to skin integrity, which is paramount for a leg amputee. The issues I've had have taken me off my leg and bike for a large part of this year.

I also went two years with a hole in the side of my leg, as such things do not readily heal inside the warm, moist, salty, no air, prosthetic liner environment. I trained and raced with it, which was a sizeable infection risk, but goal was racing the World Cup, and I did that. Then I took the time to allow for healing.

The snugness of the prosthetic fit is so important, and any changes in body fluid level or athlete's body mass impacts that dynamic and can quickly create big problems.

 

[BroDeal]

So Oscar isn't happy with the guy that beat him in the 200m, says his blades are too long.

http://www.espn.co.uk/london-olympics-2012/sport/story/168245.html

Here is the video of it, the comeback is a bit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHGi0sEBu-I

What a d-bag. After using bogus science to deny the advantage he has over able-bodied--or whatever the term should be--runners, he has the gall to say this:

"Not taking away from Alan's performance — he's a great athlete — but these guys are a lot taller and you can't compete [with the] stride length," Pistorius said in a broadcast interview. "You saw how far he came back. We aren't racing a fair race."

He then goes on to say:

"He's never run a 21-second race and I don't think he's a 21-second athlete," Pistorius said. "I've never lost a 200-metre race in my career."

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2012/09/02/sp-paralympics-oscar-pistorius-london-alan-oliveira.html

 

[virandociclista]

Brazilzilzilzilzillllllll!!

 

[silverrocket]

I agree with BroDeal. Pistorius all but admits that the blades are such a mechanical advantage by stating that a slightly longer blade length is enough to turn a non 21 second runner into a 21 second runner. Makes him a hypocrite, but also suggests what many thought: Pistorius himself was only able to make it to the Olympics because of his blades, not his talent.

Besides showing terrible sportsmanship in trashing his Oliveira's win by calling it "ridiculous", I think his interpretation is also incorrect. If you watch the race you can see the Brazilian has a much, much higher stride rate than Pistorius, so the comeback is not necessarily a case of Oliveira taking longer strides, but of moving his legs faster.

 

[Bicycle]

Ridiculous from Oscar. The technology is fine when it suits him - but as soon as he loses he starts moaning. Deary me.

 

[silverrocket]

Pistorius has now apologized for the "timing" of his comments, but not for the comments themselves. Couple of articles:

http://http://www.cbc.ca/sports/opinion/2012/09/pistorius-oliveira-controversy-just-part-of-paralympics-evolution.html

key point: the field is mixed single and double amputees, but all the top guys and fastest times come from double amputees.

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/sep/03/oscar-pistorius-stride-length-oliveira

key point: Pistorius was wrong, because his strides were longer than Oliveira's. This supports my observation that Oliveira had a higher stride rate. Note that Pistorius had 2.3m long stride length in the last 100m, compared to 2.44m for Usain Bolt. Bolt is 15cm taller than Pistorius, and obviously much faster. Food for thought.

 

[Cancellator]

key point: the field is mixed single and double amputees, but all the top guys and fastest times come from double amputees.

I would have never thought otherwise. It makes sense that it's much harder to coordinate two kinds of legs...

 

[Cloxxki]

I understand there are rules for the maximum length of blades, based on body composition?
I happen to be an M35 but starting as a sprinter. First 100m will be next weekend. I have a short torso, and hella long legs. 995mm inseam, for a 6'4" guy, not bs'ing you.
Should I have been subject of a double amputation, would I have ended up with blades shorter than my legs used to be?
In the case of a single amputation, undoubtedly I'd be allowed to match the still present leg. But what if I had then lost the second as well?

It all is baffling to me. Like a person with severe lung illness and 150W VO2 max being allowed an assisting engine on his bike. And us debating what a fair cilinder size, and bore/stroke is. 4- stroke or 2-stroke? What does the rider way again? If you have to resort to technology to be able to perform a motion similar to running or cycling, and it's obvious that technology makes this better than flesh and blood, why keep on pushing them as "at most, equals", and allow them to go for medals despite the advantage?

So I am 6'4", currently 85.1kg. I can reach decent top speeds for a non-runner who's recently picked it up, well into his 30's. My legs, long as they may be, are way heavy. Size 13 feet don't help. I know that if I got those replaced by blades such as these guys (not that I'd wish that upon anyone), that I would reach WAY higher speeds still. I can feel my legs lagging when approaching top speed. They just won't move any faster. Legs are planted, body moves forward close to 30kph, and the leg (and size 13 foot) need to somehow be placed in front of me in a split second. Foot probably reaches 70kph. And there's a shoe attached as I can't go without (just yet). The blade is a carbon plate with spikes. It's just no comparison.

Shoes (add-on weight to the able body) are not allowed to feature spring-action components. Yet blades are leg-long springs, weighing LESS than legs.

Double pace palm, shake my head in disbelief.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

I happen to be an M35 but starting as a sprinter. First 100m will be next weekend.

Good luck with that.
What sort of prosthetic are you using to run with?

I thought 35 was a CP category, not amputee?

I can't ever imagine running with a prosthetic. Cycling sure (that's bad enough on my stump as it is). But running with all the extra shear forces, ouch! I admire those that do, although presumably the congenital amputees have a significant adaptation advantage.

 

[taiwan]

Shoes (add-on weight to the able body) are not allowed to feature spring-action components. Yet blades are leg-long springs, weighing LESS than legs.

Double pace palm, shake my head in disbelief.

I think it's just another reason to keep able bodied athletes and amputees in different categories, for official races.

I wonder what the threshold is for a spring action component - you do get running spikes w/ carbon plates. Probably for aesthetics, but on the other hand different spikes do give different 'bounce' or 'return' I think. I wonder if there's a particular value which is considered a spring. Then again the bounce is probably more about the track than the shoe.

Good luck with the 100m, although if you're that tall maybe you're better suited to a 200m where you have more time to stride out?

 

[Cloxxki]

Good luck with the 100m, although if you're that tall maybe you're better suited to a 200m where you have more time to stride out?

Thanks,
I don't subscribe much to the matching of a body feature to a specific sport or distance. I was too tall to be a mountainbiker, yet I did fine. Too heavy to climb steep hills, but that's where I made my passes. Too tall for tight trails, but there I rode the shorties off my wheel as my slipstream was just too good too miss out on, for anyone.

Coming from a history of MTB, and not even being all that bad at marathons (didn't train for it at all, or trained much at all), I don't consider myself a fast twitch.
But yeah, 200m might suit me better. I can see the quick guys (my age) out-sprinting me over 60m more easily than 200m. I can match top speeds of some sub-2'00 800m Juniors, but usually lose in the first meters coming up to speed. Mental factor is hardest though, keeping the power down as the hurt comes on. In 26s or so, plenty of time to feel the pain. I did a 800m recently, and the last 200m were hell, and I failed to get the most out of myself, ran like wussy. That makes 100m seem like fun, but having to get it all right in a split second first time, makes it difficult.
In fact in training, I tend to like the 300's, especially with good rest in between. There I can hang with kids that I will be killed by in the race length of their choice.
I will likely not suck at 100-200, again for my age and experience, and I do feel leg length plays a large factor there. I don't take long strides though, tend to have the highest cadance with whomever I run. Technique is not to be underestimated. At Olympic level, there is just no margin for technical interpretation, you don't run sub-10 in bad form. Only Michael Johnson did such things, and we know about him...

 

[OnePercenter]

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/sep/03/oscar-pistorius-stride-length-oliveira

key point: Pistorius was wrong, because his strides were longer than Oliveira's. This supports my observation that Oliveira had a higher stride rate. Note that Pistorius had 2.3m long stride length in the last 100m, compared to 2.44m for Usain Bolt. Bolt is 15cm taller than Pistorius, and obviously much faster. Food for thought.

Pistorious was actually right about stride length in a way. Just poorly expressed.

It's not about absolute stride length but relative stride length. That is stride length relative to how your legs are turning over. (The "speed of leg repositioning" referred to in that article).

All things being equal the longer blades give you a longer stride length for a exactly the same rate and fashion of leg turnover. You're moving your physical legs through the same angle and at the same speed but you're running faster just because your "limbs" are longer.

You can clearly see the difference in running style between Pistorious and Oliviera in the side on video, caused by the relatively different length in blades each is using. Pistorious has the same kind of high knee drive, which sacrifices turnover speed for the sake of stride length. Oliviera is more of a low knee lift shuffle, which allows for very high leg turnover but he isn't sacrificing nearly as much as you'd expect in stride length.

 

[More Strides than Rides]

I think it's just another reason to keep able bodied athletes and amputees in different categories, for official races.

I wonder what the threshold is for a spring action component - you do get running spikes w/ carbon plates. Probably for aesthetics, but on the other hand different spikes do give different 'bounce' or 'return' I think. I wonder if there's a particular value which is considered a spring. Then again the bounce is probably more about the track than the shoe.

Good luck with the 100m, although if you're that tall maybe you're better suited to a 200m where you have more time to stride out?

In the shoe industry, "springyness" is termed responsiveness, which I think is more appropriate. A track spike is much more responsive to applied force, than a trainer, for example. A carbon plate is not a spring, it just transfers energy very well, giving springyness

 

[OnePercenter]

In the shoe industry, "springyness" is termed responsiveness, which I think is more appropriate. A track spike is much more responsive to applied force, than a trainer, for example. A carbon plate is not a spring, it just transfers energy very well, giving springyness

The prosthetics are actually much more like a spring than you think. They are designed to efficiently store and return energy rather than just rigidly transfer power.

http://www.ossur.com/?PageID=13462

The reason that wasn't ruled an clear advantage for Oscar over able-bodied runners is that physical feet and legs effectively do the same thing through muscles and tendons. Of course your carbon fibre is never going to get fatigued .......

 

[taiwan]

In the shoe industry, "springyness" is termed responsiveness, which I think is more appropriate. A track spike is much more responsive to applied force, than a trainer, for example. A carbon plate is not a spring, it just transfers energy very well, giving springyness

Just saying though - it you had a full length carbon plate it could potentially act as a spring - it might be a fine distinction. A full length plastic plate might do that too to a lesser extent.

 

[taiwan]

Thanks,
I don't subscribe much to the matching of a body feature to a specific sport or distance. I was too tall to be a mountainbiker, yet I did fine. Too heavy to climb steep hills, but that's where I made my passes. Too tall for tight trails, but there I rode the shorties off my wheel as my slipstream was just too good too miss out on, for anyone.

Coming from a history of MTB, and not even being all that bad at marathons (didn't train for it at all, or trained much at all), I don't consider myself a fast twitch.
But yeah, 200m might suit me better. I can see the quick guys (my age) out-sprinting me over 60m more easily than 200m. I can match top speeds of some sub-2'00 800m Juniors, but usually lose in the first meters coming up to speed. Mental factor is hardest though, keeping the power down as the hurt comes on. In 26s or so, plenty of time to feel the pain. I did a 800m recently, and the last 200m were hell, and I failed to get the most out of myself, ran like wussy. That makes 100m seem like fun, but having to get it all right in a split second first time, makes it difficult.
In fact in training, I tend to like the 300's, especially with good rest in between. There I can hang with kids that I will be killed by in the race length of their choice.
I will likely not suck at 100-200, again for my age and experience, and I do feel leg length plays a large factor there. I don't take long strides though, tend to have the highest cadance with whomever I run. Technique is not to be underestimated. At Olympic level, there is just no margin for technical interpretation, you don't run sub-10 in bad form. Only Michael Johnson did such things, and we know about him...

I bet if you lengthen your stride you'll go faster, but it takes some confidence because in 100m you only have a few seconds to work with and it can be tempting to scrabble at the ground. I speak for myself though. I was told to lengthen my own stride, but I'm still sort of working out what it means by trial and error. To describe a recent improvement I've made to my form - now I bring the knee forward more and strike the ground further back, and the two legs sort of balance each other out. Used to be that when sprinting my legs were almost rigid and I was just clawing/scrabbling away at a high cadence.

But I'm posting this more for my own amusement than from confidence that I as a relative novice could advise someone I've never even seen.

 

[OnePercenter]

Just saying though - it you had a full length carbon plate it could potentially act as a spring - it might be a fine distinction. A full length plastic plate might do that too to a lesser extent.

There's big difference in action between the two. The only "springiness" you can get in a in a running spike is that between the footplate (under the ball of the foot) and the rest of the sole. The energy going into is from foot flexion rather than gravity which is obviously not the case from a j-shaped prosthetic limb.

If you had legs and tried to whack a big-a$$ spring (say a j-shaped carbon fibre extension) on the bottom of your running shoe it wouldn't be legal.

 

[taiwan]

There's big difference in action between the two. The only "springiness" you can get in a in a running spike is that between the footplate (under the ball of the foot) and the rest of the sole. The energy going into is from foot flexion rather than gravity which is obviously not the case from a j-shaped prosthetic limb.

If you had legs and tried to whack a big-a$$ spring (say a j-shaped carbon fibre extension) on the bottom of your running shoe it wouldn't be legal.

Yeah but (and excuse me for suggesting this) imagine you happened to a person who did not have toes, and whose foot stopped at the ball. If you had a carbon plate from the heel extending to where the toes would be, with a bend at the ball where it could flex - what you would have could equally be described as a prosthetic set of toes and a conventional running spike. The front part would bend and return as you landed on it.

 

[silverrocket]

I would have never thought otherwise. It makes sense that it's much harder to coordinate two kinds of legs...

It does make sense, as it also makes sense that congenital amputees would have an advantage as well, but what I find interesting is that two types of amputees are competing in the same race, when the double-amputees clearly have the advantage.

I really don't understand the paralympics, and how people with quite different disabilities are competing with each other. It seems like an impossible playing field to keep level.

 

[Cloxxki]

I bet if you lengthen your stride you'll go faster, but it takes some confidence because in 100m you only have a few seconds to work with and it can be tempting to scrabble at the ground. I speak for myself though. I was told to lengthen my own stride, but I'm still sort of working out what it means by trial and error. To describe a recent improvement I've made to my form - now I bring the knee forward more and strike the ground further back, and the two legs sort of balance each other out. Used to be that when sprinting my legs were almost rigid and I was just clawing/scrabbling away at a high cadence.

But I'm posting this more for my own amusement than from confidence that I as a relative novice could advise someone I've never even seen.

I've not sprinted for performance yet. Other than to straighten out the juniors sometimes Having been doing 5k's and training as a mid-distance runner, doing the occasion 1000, 1500 and 3000 last season, I have been looking more are pose style running efficiency that outright speed. That to me means driving the knees/hips, keeping toes high, swinging the arms staight, and indeed, the contact point as far aft as possible. Not exactly easy to get right all at the same time, let alone after a starting gun.

Also, I don't do any form of strength, and barely any endurance. Just the mid-distance track practices and like one longer solo run. I'm like a semi-chubby M35 who's really a cyclist, runs mid-distance, but is less laughable in sub-lap distances.
I did some test starts after practice yesterday, and leg length seems to be all that matter. Man, they felt slow. (after 10x300 at 52-56')
If I should happen to have the strength for the longer strides, I might get a bit more speed from it. I'd need to slap the track harder.
When I first (after transitioning out of heel strike) got to taste top speed, it felt like the legs could not keep up. That might well be a sign of slight understriding, for that given speed?
As much as extra speed would interest me, we're talking about a tall old man with little muscle stability taping on US13's, and intending to race again some other time. I need to stay in one piece, somehow, and long strides to me are assocciated with injury.