The Debriefing: Olympic Sprinters Should Cut Off Their Legs

The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.



I don't normally pay a lot of attention to the Norwich Union Grand Prix. I haven't followed the event closely since Lars Axegolf was disqualified in 1978 for stuffing two shot-puts down the front of his shorts and telling people he had elephantitis and deserved a head-start in the 400 meter sprint. I could never get over the scandal.

But the issue of disability in sports has again come to the forefront in the Norwich Union Grand Prix. A South-African sprinter, a man by the name of Oscar Pistorius, has gotten permission to run the 400m. Track and field really isn't my thing, so normally, I wouldn't have taken notice ... but Oscar Pistorius doesn't really have legs. That makes his presence in a sprint somewhat unique, yes?

(Also at the bottom: We're going to be seeing a lot of Dane Cook, Eric Brynes' bulldog couldn't get away in time, and South Koreans really suck at football.)

Oscar, you see, was born without fibulas. Fibulas are the less famous of the two bones connecting the knee to the ankle, the bigger and more appreciated one being the tibia. The fibula is the smaller, thinner bone that runs along the outside, and you probably don't really appreciate your fibula, but you'd miss it if it was gone. If you had to live just five minutes without yours, you would immediately campaign for its inclusion into the "knee bone is connected to the thigh bone" song, no matter how badly a three-syllable word threw that lovable children's song into rhythmic chaos.

Do to his lack of fibulas, Oscar had his legs amputated at the knee when he was 11 months old. He runs with prosthetics called Cheetahs, which look like giant carbon-fiber shoehorns.

And after proving that he was good enough to compete, last month, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) gave Oscar permission to run in events alongside non-disabled competitors (he's still trying to get into the Olympics, however). He ran the 400m in 46.56 seconds, impressive compared to the 44.00 time that won the Olympic gold in 2004. In the 200m, Oscar ran a 21.58, and in 19.79 took the gold. And in the 100m, Oscar ran a 10.91, while 9.85 earned a gold medal.

So he's not the world's fastest, by any means ... he's not close. He's in the ballpark, right? He should be able to compete?

Not so fast, according to some competitors. They argue that Oscar has an unfair advantage because of his prosthetics, because they allow him to have a longer stride than someone with their naturally-born legs.

Putting aside for a second the sheer ridiculous notion that someone who was born without fibulas has an advantage in a sprint, I'd like to show you this excerpt from a letter by Trevor Brauckmann, the prosthetisit for Oscar Pistorius.

A lot is made of the "spring loaded blades" and how they assist him with running faster. The facts are that they are not spring loaded and that he has to physically force the feet to load and return energy. The nature of the material is such that what you put in is some of what you get back (between 10% and 60%). Factors such as gravity and compression of body tissue allows for loss in energy return.

The feet can be likened to stilts that are springy or lively. The feet have no electronic or mechanical devices or for that manner any other form of powering themselves. Therefore if you walk flat footed you will not get any energy return and will therefore not move at any great pace. By the way, the feet have no heals and in a patient with two amputations this makes standing and walking in a "normal" fashion almost impossible.

So I ask you. If you were in a sprint next month, and you could choose what you have below your knee, and you had the following two choices ...

Option A: Your foot.

Option B: This thing:


Which one are you going with? I'll take the foot, thanks. That thing looks more like a hockey stick from the year 2085, and my pedicurist wouldn't have any idea what to do with it.

Let me take a second here and make sure I understand this argument correctly. There are a group of athletes who are equipped with natural limbs ... natural limbs which have evolved over 85 million years to serve human beings the best they possibly can, and these athletes have had their entire lives to learn how to use these limbs to their maximum capabilities.

And then there's one guy who has a carbon fiber thingamajig attached to his knee that comes with a 12-month warranty. And I'm to believe that he has the advantage? Must be one hell of a warranty on that thing.

You know, if Oscar were interested in cheating someone, I think he'd just get into blood doping or EPO, just like everyone else. If we're going to take into account Oscar Pistorius' "advantages," shouldn't we also take into account some disadvantages? Things like, oh, I don't know... having stumps for legs? Isn't this a pretty large barrier for an aspiring Olympic sprinter?

When this guy trains, he has to consider countless other things that non-disabled athletes would never consider. What remains of his legs probably hurts like hell and bleeds and oozes and all sorts of nasty things. He's got to worry about these things coming off, breaking, cracking ... what if he's past his 12 month warranty?

I'm just not buying rhat Oscar Pistorius has it easier because he uses prosthetics. You know, there's a reason that Sarah Connor was able to take down the Terminator. There's a reason that RoboCop wasn't able to forge out a long-lasting career in World Championship Wrestling. There's a reason that Buster Bluth was so upset after a seal in a yellow bowtie bit off his hand, forcing him to replace it with a metal hook. If Hollywood's taught us anything, it's that the natural human limb is always, always the preferable option.

If the Cheetahs made their users cheaters, then the sprint times from the Cheetah users would all be faster than the Olympic times from non-disabled athletes. Not the case. In fact, no one else is even as close to as fast as Pistorius on the Cheetahs, suggesting that his speed is due not to his technology, but to his speed.

Tell you what, fellow competitors ... if you really believe that Pistorius has an unfair advantage, or you just want to see how much faster his fake legs make him go, I'm willing to help you out. I've got a big rusty saw, and I've got a wooden spoon you can hold between your teeth while I hack your limbs off, Dances With Wolves-style.

You should be good to go for the '08 Olympics in Sydney. World records are going to fall, I can feel it.






... because I bet you didn't think you'd see a picture of Paul Pierce shaking hands with Jose Mourinho, while Juan Dixon stands in the background looking angry today. Tomorrow, Stephen Jackson enjoying a daiquiri with Joey Barton.







Eric Byrnes' "Swimming" Bulldog. Because he/she was the least irritating media presence in McCovey Cove over the past two days (that's not the dog in question pictured, by the way). "Hey, look at me, I'm a reporter, and I'm in the water! On a boat! Look at that! That squirrel can water-ski."

As cute as the dog was, though, I'm not sure it actually qualifies as a "swimming" bulldog. Listen, you can take any dog, put a lifejacket on it, and toss it in the water, but that doesn't make it a swimming bulldog. It makes it a bulldog that you just tossed in the water. You can do the same thing with a newborn baby if you want (I've found that parents tend to frown on this, however), but it doesn't mean the little guy left the womb with the ability to swim.

Byrnes tossed a baseball into the water, and then implored his dog to after it ... eventually, the dog did make the plunge, but paddled in the opposition direction, towards freedom. Good for you, doggie. Don't be anyone's canine media whore.



Dane Cook. I had a long internal struggle before putting this here. Not because I can't figure out if I like Dane Cook or not ... I figured that one out for myself for a while ago. I don't get him, he rarely makes me laugh ... it's just not for me. But hey, different strokes, right?

It just seems like I hate every choice every professional sports league makes to do their promo spots, sing their national anthems, do their halftime shows, etc. Every single one. So at a certain point, I've got to ask myself, "Is it the NBA, NFL, and MLB that always screw this up, or am I just a curmudgeonly cynic who hates everything?"

I spent about an hour on this, and here's what I came up with: I loved the NFL's "Playoffs" spots with Don Cheadle, and the Prince selection for the last Super Bowl halftime show was fantastic. And after suffering through Cowboy Troy at the NBA All-Star Game, I believe I have earned the eternal right to hate, without any thought or consideration, any entertainment decision that any sports league ever makes, from now until the end of the world.

So this one stands.



7:30, ESPNU. FIFA U-20 World Cup, USA vs. Uruguay.
7:30, ESPN2. Minor-League Baseball: AAA All-Star Game.
10:00 (or so). ESPN. The Bronx is Burning.
11:00, ESPN2. Boxing. Wednesday Night Fights.
11:00, ESPNU. FIFA U-20 World Cup, Spain vs. Brazil.