These words, by sports-scientist Gert-Peter Brueggemann, refer to South African runner Oscar Pistorius, who has been doing his level best to qualify for the next summer Olympics, despite the fact that he has no natural legs below his knees.Pistorius was born without the fibula in his lower legs and with other serious defects in his feet, which led to a double amputation. He now uses special carbon-fiber “Cheetah” legs, which are shaped like the letter “J” – mimicking the speedy feline namesake.
In the last couple years, the young South African has literally leapt onto the big stage of international track and field, where his times make him a serious contender for the Olympic Games.
But wait, there’s a hitch. A big one.
The International Association of Athletics (IAAF) has just ruled that Pistorius will not be allowed to compete in the Olympics no matter how well he runs – because his prosthetic limbs are deemed to give him an unfair advantage over his able-bodied competitors.
Believe me, I do understand all the scientific arguments used to exclude Pistorius. His cheetah legs are brilliantly designed and engineered, built for running in a way that ordinary human legs are not. Sure – I get it.
But I think there is a good deal here that Pistorius’ (presumably) able-bodied judges and critics do not understand about what it is like to live with disability. As someone who lives every day with disability (while certainly not in the same ballpark as Oscar’s), I think I can say with some confidence that nobody who has not experienced the life-long challenges of disability can possibly understand what many of us face every day – things that go far beyond the mechanics of how we get from place to place.
Let me give you a personal example. As some of you may know, I am almost completely paralyzed from the right knee down and partially paralyzed from the left knee down, with spotty paralysis elsewhere in my lower body. This is all the result of a bad bike accident I had as a teenager. Ever since then I have had to wear a variety of hard plastic braces on my right foot to stabilize and protect it. I really can’t do much without them.
Most of the time, my condition puts me at something of a disadvantage in sports. I fence, play tennis, soccer and bike mostly, all sports that are movement and leg intensive. But in soccer, my brace, despite slowing me down and making me somewhat less maneuverable – also gives me certain advantages.
The brace is made of a hard plastic, molded to the back of my calf and the bottom of my foot. So when I kick a soccer ball the right way, my kick is supported and strengthened by the plastic rigidity of the brace inside my shoe. So I can kick with surprising power. But I rarely do this, really boot it – because my foot is paralyzed, and the harder I kick, the harder it is to control the ball – which is already very difficult. Imagine kicking a ball and feeling nothing in your foot or lower leg! So yes, I do have a mechanical strength advantage – but it is an advantage tempered and offset by other very real challenges.
Another advantage I have is also strength-related. In soccer there can be a lot of contact. Lots of scrabbling and jostling for the ball. Accidentally (or sometimes not) kicking an opponent or being kicked is a very regular occurrence – all part of the game. But when someone winds up and gives me a good hard kick to the right leg – their foot will more likely than not connect to the hard plastic shell I wear! The player will often end up holding their bruised toes and grimacing while I go on about my merry way, feeling nothing. Of course the reason I feel nothing is not only because of the brace, but because of my paralysis – which makes me less maneuverable and more prone to injuries (which take way longer to heal than they do for many of my competitors due to lack of circulation). The brace also forces me to work much harder than my opponents because I have to push against the brace with every step – there is only resistance for me, no free movement, nothing easy.
So – I clearly have some mechanical advantages. Should I be kicked out of my local rec. league? Should I join a league for people “like me?”
Once again, I understand that my situation and Pistorius’ is like apples and organs in many ways, and I do not presume to speak for whatever challenges he may face every day, out of public view. But I am quite sure that he has them, whether he wants to share them with his critics or not. Not that they would change their views one whit. Probably his candor would simply leave Oscar feeling humiliated and full of the sense of bitter futility that many people with disabilities report as part of their regular diet.
Should this way of “leveling the playing field” not be extended to its logical conclusions? If people are concerned about Pistorius’ mechanical advantages, then it seems only fair to remove other kinds of advantage as well. What about the level of training and support that American athletes often have compared to athletes from the developing world? In terms of diet, training and financial and material support, don’t American athletes have a ferocious advantage over their fellow-athletes from the Ivory Coast or Haiti, for example?
I recently took my daughter to watch the US Women’s Soccer team play against the Ukrainian National team. It was super fun for both of us, of course, and we were fascinated to see that every single member of the US team were wearing special contact lenses (donated and designed by Nike, I believe) which mitigated all the various effects of the sun! Surely this would have to fall into the category of a serious mechanical and financial advantage.
What is it that makes an amputee’s prosthetic limbs a more serious “advantage” than many of the other advantages that some athletes always seem to have over others!?
It seems likely that Pistorius’ cheetah legs do give him mechanical advantages in some ways, but the road he has to travel, and has had to travel for his whole life are far beyond what most athletes can comprehend. Tireless will, courage, strength and resilience are characteristic of all people who excel in life the way Oscar does – but he has to do it in a society where he must not only overcome his own physical challenges, but the challenges of a profoundly “able-ist” culture.
The human body is glorified everywhere in our culture, but most profoundly at the Olympic Games - and Pistorius has been found wanting. The greater glory and reward must of course go to those who represent the perfection of the human body – not the pursuit of perfection despite the perfectly beautiful and ordinary shortcomings of the human body.
No, that is a completely different category – the Paralympics. Of course Paralympians are every bit as gifted and driven as their Olympian counterparts, and the level of competition is every bit as intense (check out the wonderful documentary “Murderball” for just one example of this). So Pistorius should be content with that right? He should be happy and proud to compete against “his own kind”, not against the best of the best – which sometimes (gasp!) includes people without disabilities!
He wants to run against the best of the best, like every runner does. Seems pretty reasonable to me. And besides, the Paralympics, despite plenty of lip service, needed a lawsuit to force the Olympic Committee to even begin to support the travel and training of Paralympians in the most minimal ways compared to their fellow Olympians. When was the last time you turned on ESPN and saw live coverage and the Paralympics?
Meanwhile, able-bodied athletes are dropping like flies in doping scandal after doping scandal – but many more are not dropping at all, and continue their careers scot free. Other than putting an asterix next to their names in the record books, how has any of this affected Barry Bonds or Mark McGuire? How many millions of their dollars have they had to return to the innocent wallets of the fans?
Congress has been listening with great interest and moral outrage to the findings of the most recent report about doping in baseball, but are any athletes actually being punished, aside from a somewhat tricky PR mess for their handlers to try and rescue them from? Many of these players, in baseball and other sports can continue to cash their immense paychecks and play their games – but Oscar Pistorius is ruled ineligible to compete at all!
Are they afraid that if they allow him to compete, athletes will begin amputating their own limbs to catch up to his competitive advantage? If they are willing to take illegal performance-enhancing drugs that destroy their bodies and their psyches – surely losing a limb would be a small price to pay for victory! Yet I have not heard anything about anyone buying a do-it-yourself amputation kit on the internet. Nobody wants to trade places with Oscar Pistorius. They just want to keep him out of the Olympics.
I would find it all laughable if I were not so offended.
I say let him run. And if he wins – then fine, go ahead and put an asterix next to his name. But let Oscar Pistorius run. Let all of us run.
