I have a really, really hard time believing he has a 10 second advantage. I’m a 25 second 200, 55+ second 400 man. That’s like equating Oscar to some masters hack like me or a high school athlete, and that is pretty clearly far from true to anyone who has ever laced up a pair of spikes.
If he in fact has such a huge advantage, there should at least be ONE double amputee fat kid in high school running 49.xx somewhere in the universe. Until they produce at least one tub of lard double amputee boy-wonder, I’m going to consider these 10 second accusations as total bunk.
If there is some advantage, I don’t care what some scientist says, it isn’t 10 seconds- that is just insulting to an obviously dedicated athlete. I don’t know why people think it’s OK to go after a guy with a clear physical disadvantage at birth who turned it into a positive, but nobody goes after those with a genetic advantage (high white fibre proportion, etc).
If anything, the fact he’s had prosthetics since birth may be a big proprioceptive advantage, but I don’t think anyone has enough data or real world comparative experience to be able to quantify it at this point.