From The TimesDecember 20, 2007
Olympic hopes of Oscar Pistorius hit as report says he has advantage
Matthew Pryor
Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee sprinter and Paralympic champion who wants to be allowed to run in the Olympic Games, is given “a considerable advantage” over his abled-bodied competitors by his prosthetic blades, the professor charged with testing him said yesterday.
Professor Peter Bruggemann, the director of the Institute of Biomechanics at the German Sports University in Cologne, conducted private tests on Pistorius on November 12 and 13.
The IAAF, which commissioned and paid for the tests, received Bruggemann’s report on Tuesday and it was forwarded to Pistorius yesterday.
[b]“He has a considerable advantage [over] athletes without prosthetic limbs who have undergone the same tests,” Bruggemann told Die Welt, the daily newspaper, in Germany.
“The difference is several percentage points. The prosthetics return 90 per cent of the energy (in each stride) and the human returns only 60 per cent of the impact energy.” [/b]
Pistorius will have been shocked because he was not expecting any public announcements on the results until early next year.
“The IAAF can confirm that Professor Peter Bruggemann’s report was received yesterday and has been sent today to Oscar Pistorius’s representative in confidence,” the IAAF said in a statement yesterday.
“At present, the IAAF does not plan to discuss the contents of the report or make any public announcement about any decision related to the report until January 10, 2008.”
The IAAF has not come to a verdict, but because the decision of the council will be based on Bruggemann’s report, that seems academic. “We will only produce the data, the decisions are for the IAAF,” Bruggemann said last month, but he appears to have made his own decision.
Pistorius ran the 400 metres in 46.34sec, 0.84 outside the qualifying time for next year’s Olympics, in March last year when he was second in the South African National Championships.
He demanded the tests after a new IAAF competition rule – rule 144.2, banning “technical aids” – at the end of March resulted in invitations for him to run in IAAF events being withdrawn. He was allowed to run in a “B” race in Rome, where the IAAF collected data, and then in the Norwich Union Grand Prix in Sheffield.
Pistorius, 21, was born without fibula bones and his legs were amputated below the knee at 11 months old.
He has often said that he would stop running in able-bodied events if the tests proved that his carbon-fibre blades – called “Cheetahs” by Ossur, the manufacturer – gave him an advantage.
But he did not expect the tests to go against him. He said that if they did he would seek a second opinion from another set of independent tests.