The fastest man on one leg will be cheering for the fastest man on no legs this summer.
Canadian Earle Connor, who has covered 100 metres in 12.14 seconds using a carbon-fibre prosthetic, was surprised and delighted yesterday to hear double-amputee South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius had been allowed to compete for a spot at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Unfortunately for Connor, there is no chance he will have the same opportunity to race against able-bodied sprinters at an Olympic competition.
When the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled Pistorius's Cheetah Flex-Foot legs were not providing him with an unfair advantage, the decision was for Pistorius, not for all disabled athletes. Added to that for Connor is the cruel irony he is too disabled with one leg missing to run as well as Pistorius can with two legs missing.
"He's in the least disabled division; [his amputation is]below the knee," Connor said of Pistorius, a 200- and 400-metre specialist. "He's got more functionality. He's closer to able-bodied than I'll ever be. I'm missing a knee, a leg, a shin bone, an ankle, a foot. The technology is way too far behind to put it together for me. [The Olympics]is not on my radar."
Connor had his left leg amputated through the knee as a baby after he was born without a fibula. He grew up playing able-bodied sports and eventually turned to track after watching the 1996 Paralympics on television. But according to track coaches and officials, running with a single artificial limb is vastly different than running with two.
"Pistorius's strides, his stride pattern, can be equated and balanced to an able-bodied person's," said Earl Church, Canada's Para-Athletics head coach. "I don't want to take anything away from Earle, but his biggest task is to imitate the stride of an able-bodied person."
Church explained that Pistorius's ability to "balance off his running gait … helps him come close to being an able-bodied sprinter."
Canada's Olympic track and field head coach Les Gramantik agreed that Connor's requirements are more difficult.
"There's a cadence [to sprinting with an artificial limb]" Gramantik explained. "We can't outrun the healthy leg. With a double amputee, that's not an issue."
What's been at issue is how much Pistorius's prosthetics have benefited his rise to prominence.
The IAAF commissioned a test last November that indicated the artificial limbs "used 25-per-cent less energy than able-bodied runners to run the same speed, and that they led to less vertical motion combined with 30-per-cent less mechanical work for lifting the body."
Church acknowledged Pistorius's artificial legs had "the potential to put some energy into the track" but insisted the IAAF's study was not a complete exercise.
"We need to do more research on how much energy is put into what he's doing; how much harder he works," Church said. "It's like using levers. The longer the lever, the more energy is required to move it. We need to study what are the costs of the gains."
Connor, who lives and trains in Calgary, said he'd like to know what evidence Pistorius presented at his appeal to counter the IAAF study. That aside, Connor made a point of saying Pistorius, known throughout the athletics world as the Blade Runner, has a lot of ground to make up.
"I'm happy for him, but he's still 1.5 seconds away from qualifying. In sports, that's huge," Connor said.
As for Canada's world indoor 400-metre champion, Tyler Christopher, he too was happy to hear of the ruling in Pistorius's favour.
"I don't see it [as]a bad thing," Christopher said. "If there was something that showed he was at an advantage and capable of running [a world record]41 seconds, then maybe we might have a problem. But if there's not a clear advantage to him, let's run, let's race."