Bionic runners
What does an athlete look like?
It's a question which historically has been used to discuss images of female athletes.
But lately, it's a question that can be posed to discuss something broader, something tricker than gender or race.
Disability.
It's a topic that emerged over the last week after a new study found that prosthetic limbs hinder running performance. This contradicts concerns from 2008, when South African runner Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee and pretty darn fast 400 meter sprinter wanted to compete for a spot in the Olympics. He couldn't, said the international governing body for track and field, because his prostheses gave him an unfair advantage.
Yes, a man with no legs apparently had a running advantage.
The concern was over "technological doping" making someone "bionic" or "superhuman." A court of arbitration overturned the decision and Pistorius was able to compete in the Olympic trials, missing the qualifying time by three quarters of a second.
Without the pressure of looming Olympic trials, researchers were able to construct a better design and refute earlier findings that runners with high tech prosthetics gained a performance advantage. (For complete findings, see the article in the Biology Letters of the Royal Society of London.)
Science and technology issues raise ethical questions, as was tackled by Jack Hitt in the New York Times Magazine. Should disabled athletes be allowed to compete with able-bodied athletes? Do high tech prosthetics give disabled athletes an unfair compensation?
"The progressive laws of culture are the brilliant work-around to the brutal law of the jungle," Hitt writes. "So sure, we'll build access ramps, finance kneeling buses, design J blades and invent push-rim wheelchairs -- not out of pity or political correctness but so that a wider range of human talent can enter the fray win or lose."
So often, we miss the stories of winning or losing. We (meaning people in the media, including myself) frame disability sports only as an uplifting, inspirational tale. And more often than not they are inspirational stories. That's one of the things we love about athletics -- the ability it has to inspire us, to give us hope and make us feel good. Those stories surely need to be told. But are we doing a disservice to disabled athletes by only telling the feel-good stories? Should we ask for more every day coverage of Paralympic Games -- the kind that reports on games and events as normal, every day competition where the athletes just happen to have some sort of physical disability?
Should Pistorius be allowed to compete in the Olympics if he qualifies as opposed to being relegated to the Paralympics?
What does a runner look like? Must he have both legs to be a runner?
Or are we perhaps slightly afraid of what it may mean if the runner with no legs turns out to be a better athlete than we are?
--- Amy Moritz
Follow Journey to the Finish Line on Twitter at www.twitter.com/amymoritz
