It’s about time. After an excruciating and absurd debate, double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius will be allowed to compete in the Olympics. Pistorius won his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport today which immediately overturned an asinine ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federations which stated Pistorius gained an unfair advantage from his prosthetics.
Nice unbiased reporting there! But on the issue, I don't think he should be able to compete. Frankly, the arguments "for" are pretty weak, appealing to emotion rather than the science and engineering involved. Typical is the argument that whatever benefit he gets from the artificial legs merely balances out the disadvantages he has. How this magical balancing calculus is made is not stated.
One commenter pointed out these things:
Maybe we should have an olympic event where everyone wears springs.While your friends are still playing at ground level, you will be able to jump in 6 ft leaps over them - imagine that! How would you like to run at a lightning speed of around 20 mph without any extra effort than normal running? In fact it's even easier than normal running because you are power assisted by the POWERIZER.
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