It's for serious. Oscar Pistorious runs on Cheetah (tm) blades, has broken the 100, 200 and 400 Paralympic records, and Sunday is now going to run against the best four-appendaged sprinters in the world.
JP usually doesn't get too excited about disabled athletes, but the amazing part about this guy is his personal best time: 46.56 seconds for 400 meters. If you don't know much about track, that's hauling some serious tail. The school record at the small Division III undergraduate institution JP calls his alma mater is 48.34, nearly two full seconds behind the dude with no legs. The UW Badger school record is 45.63, and Pistorious' time would put him sixth on the all-time UW list. Pretty amazing.
2 comments:
There was a good article about him in Wired, which mentions the ongoing debate about whether or not the prosthetics are an advantage: "improvements in human performance are normally limited by biology and evolution. Not in Pistorius’ case. His legs are constantly upgraded by a pit crew of Icelandic gearheads at one of the world’s most sophisticated prosthetic manufacturing facilities."
Wired also notes, however: "If you think having carbon-fiber legs will make you a faster sprinter, have the operation and we’ll see you at the track."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/blade.html
This just in: Sprinters around the world taking bandsaws to their legs?
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