The Journal of Applied Physiology has posted the abstract of the study done on Oscar Pistorius's behalf last year. This is the study which resulted in the IAAF giving him approval to move forward with his Olympic bid, which ultimately failed for lack of a qualifying time. Strangely enough, the abstract seems to imply that he has a 17 percent metabolic advantage over other 400m runners, and that he runs in a "mechanically different" manner than able-bodied runners. Seems more like grounds for disqualification, not inclusion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19541739
J Appl Physiol. 2009 Jun 18. [Epub ahead of print]
Related Articles
The fastest runner on artificial legs: different limbs, similar function?
Weyand PG, Bundle MW, McGowan CP, Grabowski AM, Brown MB, Kram R, Herr HM.
Southern Methodist University.
The recent competitive successes of a bilateral, transtibial amputee sprint runner who races with modern running prostheses has triggered an international controversy regarding the relative function provided by his artificial limbs. Here, we conducted three tests of functional similarity between this amputee sprinter and competitive male runners with intact limbs: the metabolic cost of running, sprinting endurance, and running mechanics. Metabolic and mechanical data, respectively, were acquired via indirect calorimetry and ground reaction force measurement during constant-speed, level treadmill running. First, we found that the mean gross metabolic cost of transport of our amputee sprint subject (174.9 ml O2 kg(-1) km(-1); speeds: 2.5 to 4.1 m s(-1)) was only 3.8% lower than mean values for intact-limb elite distance runners and 6.7% lower than for sub-elite distance runners, but 17% lower than for intact-limb 400-meter specialists (210.6 [13.2; SD] ml O2 kg(-1) km(-1)). Second, the speeds our amputee sprinter maintained for six all-out, constant-speed trials to failure (speeds: 6.6-10.8 m s(-1); durations: 2-90 s) were within 2.2 [0.6]% of those predicted for intact-limb sprinters. Third, at sprinting speeds of 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0 m s(-1), our amputee subject had longer foot-ground contact times (+14.7 [4.2]%), shorter aerial (-26.4 [9.9]%) and swing times (-15.2 [6.9]%), and lower stance-averaged vertical forces (-19.3 [3.1]%) than intact-limb sprinters (top speeds = 10.8 vs.10.8 [0.6] m s(-1)). We conclude that running on modern, lower-limb sprinting prostheses appears to be physiologically similar, but mechanically different than running with intact limbs. Key words: prosthetics, running economy, fatigue, biomechanics.