Fastest Man On No Legs Blazes New Trail

By the time you read this, a decision may be announced regarding the Olympic eligibility of South African runner Oscar Pistorius, billed as “the fastest man on no legs.”

Pistorius, 21, was born without calf bones or ankles, and had both of his undeveloped legs amputed when he was 11 months old. Now he holds his own in sprints against able-bodied opponents by running on curved carbon-fiber blades that attach just below his knees. “I’m not disabled,” he told London’s Daily Mail. “I just don’t have any legs.”

The challenge to the status quo posed by Pistorius, who wishes to compete at Beijing later this year, led to a rule change last March banning “technical aids” in track, and to intense biometric study commissioned by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Whatever is decided regarding Pistorius, his may be the first in a series of cases that forge new frontiers, or at least raise new questions, about performance enhancement in sports.

Enhancement through chemicals has haunted the news lately. On Friday former UNC runner Marion Jones, already stripped of five medals from the 2000 Olympic, will be sentenced for deceiving federal investigators regarding drug use and check fraud.

Then there are the raft of players accused in the Mitchell Report to the commissioner of Major League Baseball of employing steroids and human growth hormones.

Most prominent among those denying improper drug use is pitcher Roger Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner. His credibility is undercut in part by liars such as Jones, who similarly and persuasively insisted on their innocence until the day they admitted their guilt.

Of course, watching Jones, Clemens, home run hitter Barry Bonds, and others reach new competitive heights does have its benefits. Financial and entertainment benefits, that is.

Confronted by widespread steroid use in baseball, commissioner Bud Selig protested that things can’t be too bad, since attendance at games was at an all-time high in 2007.

“If you can succeed, then how you succeed doesn’t matter, until you get caught,” said Jan Boxill, a Senior Lecturer and Associate Chair in philosophy and Director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina. “We want to see the home runs, we want to see the broken records, we want to see how fast people can run…

"The fans really don’t care. If you’re looking for money, you’re not going to get rid of steroids. If you’re looking for fairness, you get rid of steroids.”

Fairness and avoiding harm are key values undercut by steroid and other drug use, said Boxill, who serves on the U.S. Anti-Doping Education Committee.

Yet the messages sent by those in sports are more mixed, the issues less clearcut, than we would like to believe.

Avoiding harm is said to be important, Boxill noted, yet we glorify boxing and football. “It’s almost impossible to play football and not have an injury,” she said.

Administering drugs to suppress pain so players can remain in the game is a path to enhanced performance; in mounting his defense, Clemens said he was only getting injected with a vitamin and a painkiller.

“Just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it’s ethical,” Boxill offered.

As for fairness, finding a competitive edge, forging a route to superior play, is a constant in sports. Some competitors have access to high-tech golf clubs and vaulting poles, to better weight rooms or to more extensive, year-round training regimens. Others do not. Lack of equal opportunity compromises the level playing field so dear to athletics.

And, somewhere just over the horizon, are tissue regeneration and genetic refinement, manipulating DNA or otherwise conjuring stronger, bigger, faster, more flexible athletes.

Which brings us to Oscar Pistorius, the so-called “Blade Runner,” who through no fault of his own walks and runs on special prosthetic devices known as “Cheetahs.”

Pistorius has set world records for Paralympic athletes at 100, 200 and 400 meters. To lend perspective, his top speed in the 400 meters is 46.56 seconds, compared to a men’s world outdoor record of 43.18 and an ACC record of 45.18.

Last fall, while racing against six able-bodied athletes, Pistorius was subjected to extensive study by Professor Peter Bruggemann, director of the Institute of Biomechanics and Orthopaedics at the German Sport University in Cologne, Germany. Based on early indications, Bruggemann will report that the blades indeed confer a competitive edge.

The IAAF stated that it “does not have, nor contemplate, a ban on prosthetic limbs, but rather technical aids. The aim of the rule change is not an attempt to prevent disabled athletes from using any artificial limbs or competing against able-bodied athletes if they are good enough to do so.”

That’s as it should be, according to a 40-year veteran track and field coach. “I see nothing wrong with it because I think anybody should have a chance to compete with anybody they want to compete with,” North Carolina coach Dennis Craddock said. “It’s just offering the young man the opportunity to compete, and I think it should be there.”

Then again, allowing participation in open competition by Pistorius, who won a Paralympics gold medal in 2004 at 200 meters, raises several unavoidable questions: Do high-tech limbs lend Pistorius an unfair advantage? Does enhanced spring and staying power (reduced fatigue by avoiding lactic acid buildup in calf muscles) overshadow slow starts and precarious balance on curves?

Pistorius’ case, like that of golfer Casey Martin a decade ago, hints at a fast-approaching future involving enhancements and adjustments far more complicated and ambiguous than taking drugs.

Martin, now men’s golf coach at the University of Oregon, fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to ride in a cart during PGA events. He suffers from a circulatory disorder in his right leg that makes it virtually impossible for him to walk a golf course without considerable pain.

Despite assertions that allowing Martin to ride a cart gave him a competitive advantage, his best showing in a 10-year career was a tie for 17th at the Tucson Open. Since 2001 Nike has presented an annual Casey Martin Award to recognize a disabled athlete.

Mechanical assistance surely will become more common as technology evolves, and will increasingly be incorporated into our bodies. The sophistication of prosthetics already has improved to meet the needs of thousands of wounded Iraq war veterans. Should we apply special tests to every former soldier entering competitive athletics if he or she was made whole through what’s called assistive technology?

In the film “I, Robot,” set in 2035, Will Smith plays heroic Chicago police detective Del Spooner, whose body is mangled when forcibly extracted from a submerged car. Smith’s character receives a new lung, new shoulder, and a bionic arm, enhancements he hides. To all appearances he is just like anyone else.

But would he still be a hero if he was a pro athlete, and used his artificial arm to throw a wicked fastball?

The search for an edge is perpetual, and distinguishing the necessary from the self-serving, the fair from the excessive, is often difficult.

“People can do things and say things to justify anything they want to do,” said UNC’s Craddock, whose chief worry remains steroids. “In this day and age, you just don’t know.”