Something I wanted to put out there for discussion. If you take the recent press surrounding South African Oscar Pistorius who is getting close to reaching the qualification standard for running 400m at the Olympics and the technology jump is now such that disabled athletes requiring prosthetics may soon be as fast (or potentially faster) than able bodied athletes, this puts sports in some moral and ethical discussions. With the right prosthetics, soon an athlete could complete a sub 8 hour ironman and win Hawaii. Things look pretty positive in this area.
This is an area i may be looking into in more depth shortly from a design perspective. The development of this area faces two differing philosophies:
go the UCI way, ban the participation (or at least limit techological advance) or
go down the route of Formula 1 and Indycar and make the sports technology part of the winning solution.
How do you feel about this ? I’d like to see how athletes stand on this subject.
Interesting problem, and one I’m glad we might have. I think it will be great if we have “so many people that overlook and over come a physical and mental disability” that we have to re-evaluate our sport, and how we categorize athletes. Triathlon would have the chance to do something different the all the other sports
I think the UCI is the wrong way to go, because its too close-minded about technology.
I think Indy and Forumla 1 is the wrong way to go, because you increase the capital needed, just to participate.
Maybe something along the lines of Drag racing, where you have Unlimited (do whatever you want, including doping, HGH, whatever) and a few categories under it might be a better solution. Hell, that might be good for cycling too!
But didn’t F1 make the drivers use tires that slowed them down? The ones with grooves rather than slicks? I don’t want much, but I thought I remembered that.
And if so, then we let the disabled athletes get as much technology as they can into the prosthetics, but then hit them with a weight penalty to their person, not just the bike.
I’m kidding of course.
I say if a person is truly disabled we let them race with whatever they can to make them faster. Think about the daily chore of missing a limb, they have it rough enough. I would just be hesitant for an extremist to come forward and chop his legs off below the hip because the fancy new prosthetics will make him faster!
It just needs to stay the way it is now, two divisions. If you have bionic parts, then you are in the para division. If you use a chair you are in the chair division. You do not race the in the same category as fully limbed people. WHat your are talking about has already happened. WHeel chair racers stomp the times of leg runners, but they have their own sport now, fully funded and sponsored, and I just saw them at the world track and field champs doing the 1500… Seperate but equal should be the theme here, and with Bush’s war in Iraq dragging on forever, there should be a lot of people to fill the ranks of the new sport. Iraq is like the triple A league where the pros will eventually come from. I used to say that about motocross racing, the triple A league for eventual pro wheel chair racers…
Hi,
I’m a challenged athlete on the national tri team (PC). However, I’m not an amputee, but I know and race with many of them.
The double amp you are referencing is freak of nature fast. There isn’t any advantage to using a prosthetic. Hopefully, it is obvious that it is a disadvantage. The world record IM time for a single BK amp is just a hair under 10 hours and it doesn’t look likely that will be challenged anytime soon…at least not anywhere near 8 hours. On the international level, there are several very fast amputee triathletes, but they aren’t anywhere near the speed of a pro/elite. There is now a very fast US female amputee triathlete, and she can win or place in her age group, but not in an elite/pro race. As a matter of fact, internationally…some of the fastest PC athletes are former elite athletes that were injured. I know of one that was olympic caliber…now he wins PC races, but is only as fast as an age grouper…nowhere near his former pro level.
I can understand the discussion of robotics/technology making athletes faster, but that is NOT the case in this day and age with current prosthetic devices. The current devices are reactionary, you can’t voluntarily move them. …not in the way we are discussing. Below knee amputees have no calf or ankle with above knee’er’s having no hamstring, knee, calf, or ankle. If an amputee is passing you in a race, it is because they are freakin’ fast. They would be even faster without the disability/prosthetic.
I’m anxiously awaiting the new Bionic Woman series on NBC…could that be our future? The future devices/limbs would have to read and interpret signals from our brain in order to move like our current limbs.
When I used to officiate high school swimming, there were seriously 3-4 pages in the National Federation rulebook devoted to the idea of accomidating physically challenged athletes in such a way that enabled them to compete as much as possible without giving them an unfair advantage compared to able-bodied athletes.
This is my first post to the forum, been lurking a while, but this topic really interested me.
I’d like to do a little thought experiment with this question.
Posit that at some point due to advances in technology and material sciences a “disabled” athlete becomes faster than an “able” athlete and begins winning major events.
Posit that eventually more “disabled” athletes beginning finishing on the podium.
Eventually there come a time where in order to win on has to be disabled.
Here is my question:
Would a normally “abled” individual electively have their legs surgically removed in order to be competitive? And how would this differ from blood doping or steroids or any other unnatural enhancement. Couldn’t the same claim be made that if you weren’t born a certain way that using any unnatural aids is technically cheating?
Let’s face it when it comes right down to it an abled athlete is limited to the muscle and bone and tendons they were born with. They can train to enhance them and build them up but the material that they are fundamentally made up of remains fixed. A disabled athlete can swap out their legs or other body part for better parts, they aren’t limited to what they have right now, as material sciences advance so does their performance. This is unfair.
Up until now it hasn’t been much of an issue since disabled athletes were never in contention. But they are knocking on the door. It’s similar to what women have experienced in pro sports.
so you are left with one of two options. 1: Allow them to compete with able bodied athletes but strictly limit their use of technology to make the playground even (which I think is practically impossible) or 2: Create a category especially for them (which I think is ultimately the most fair option).
Hello, I agree with you for tri, and running with current technology, but the day is already here where some prosthetics give a sizable advantage in some sports. The obvious example is in high jumping. As I understand the paralympics had to put in rules some time ago governing the construction of prosthetics for high jumpers. Estentially make them long enough and springy enough and you can jump over anything.
I thnk its fanastic that double amp runners are approaching world class times, but I don’t think its possible to determine if someone is faster or slower with the prosthetics. Specifically in Oscar P case I’m willing to say that he is slower at this time than he would’ve been, but I suspect that more advances are coming. When he breaks the WR ny 2 seconds (and I hope he does) what then?
Lets try a scenario. Under the IAAF current rules Oscar can race able bodied athletes. Lets just say he medaled with a Bronze and you were the athlete that came 4th. How would this be viewed.
The other side is that Oscar is so much better than his contemporaries at the moment that he literally has no equal to race.
I’m not sure this is a solvable problem but how should we evalaute these circumstances ?
I just think that he has to race with other disabled athletes. No way can it be precisely determined when a prosthetic improves to the point that it is exactly equal. Other athletes will likely catch up with Oscar. That said i have no objection to Oscar in open meets, just not WC and OG.
The UCI restricts advances in bike technology. Seems like the same could be done for prosthetics, allowing an amputee to compete in the same category – all prosthetics must conform to double-triangle technology.
I don’t have any knowledge on the subject matter personally, but I’ve discussed this with my girlfriend who is in her 4th year of medical school and is pursuing a specialty in physical medicine and rehabilitation, so I’m basically sharing her opinion, which, unlike mine, does have some merit.
She says that the energy required for someone to move with a prosthetic is significantly more than a normal able bodied person. In fact, there are some people who don’t qualify for prosthetics simply because they lack the additional strength required to move the prosthetic.
There might be some research to back this up, but I don’t have the time to look.
If that is in fact the case, i don’t think you need to worry about people electing to have limbs removed to go faster, it wouldn’t happen. Not to mention the downtime and lost fitness due to surgery and recovery.
I think that removal of limbs is a far out idea., but I wouldn’t be surprised to see pitchers in baseball getting surgery to improve velocity. As I understand it the Tommy John Surgery could be done on someone whose tendon is stretched, but not torn. Tightenng it up could help with velocity.
There is research to support this. I perform a lot of amputations, and the increased oxygen demands an amputee needs is vastly increased (mind you, most of the amps I’m doing are on sick people already and an amputation actually has an increased mortality rate because of this).
As far as biomechanical advantages - this is quite intriguing. I’d say just leave the rules as is. If some unlucky freak of nature comes along with a huge V02 max, gets in a motorcycle accident, looses both legs, now has 2 super high tech carbon legs and outruns everyone so be it. He was going to be a fast athlete anyway and there is no way to know if the prosthetics made the difference or not.
As far as biomechanical advantages - this is quite intriguing. I’d say just leave the rules as is. If some unlucky freak of nature comes along with a huge V02 max, gets in a motorcycle accident, looses both legs, now has 2 super high tech carbon legs and outruns everyone so be it. He was going to be a fast athlete anyway and there is no way to know if the prosthetics made the difference or not. \\
Since you are in the business, you know that things never remain static. What was the technology 20 years ago vs today?? I would guess that they are running much faster today. And 20 years from now they will be going even faster. THere is a way to know if prosthetics are faster, just like we measure everything else. There just has been no need too yet, but with computer modeling and a little creative programming, we could tell.
WHat about a guy that lost a foot, should he be able to wear a fin?? I gurantee you, he will be a faster swimmer that an able bodied swimmer. It’s the same arguement, taking technology to it’s limits to make these people faster or better, in whatever sport they are in. I have no problem with it either, but you have to keep the divisions seperate at the end of the day. What we have today will look archaic in 10 to 20 years. I invision that most prosthetics will have imbedded smart chips of some kind, and a much better power/speed ratio…
First - amputations of the foot only (Symmes) are rare and do not function well at all. Midfoot amps are common (no prosthesis needed), then often up to mid calf. Since the peroneals, PT, AT, etc. are now no longer functioning, they atrophy. Attaching a “fin” now might be nice from an engineering perspective, but we are not machines. The increased oxygen demands it will now take to use said fin with the larger quads might (I have no idea) outweight the mechanical advantage of the “fin.”
Same applies with running and the S-curve carbon limbs. This may put an average person at an advantage over an otherwise “average” runner, but I doubt over any elite or pro able bodies person. Yes, the limits are sky high, but I’m speaking on a purely human locomotion system, not robotic, hydraulic, cyborg, etc.