D3 blade runner runs 44.7 (relay) - Wins open 400 as well. How is this fair?

The only event where a track implement aids an athlete used to be the pole vault. Still, with that event, every athlete is allowed to use a pole, so it's fair. Not seeing it with the blades, sorry.

He's getting most of the advantages of having legs, with little of the cost (moving that extra weight around with each stride).

Look at data wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

They don't have those events at the Paralympics or else those records would be much stronger

That’s not the argument at hand. The argument is that T44 athletes have an unfair advantage. It seems to me that if they did we’d be talking about more than two athletes over the last 12 years and in more than just one event.

Okay then, what number of pudgy-looking guys have to win national titles before you believe the blades might be giving them an advantage?

"blade" technology improving?

http://usatodayhss.com/2017/blade-runner-hunter-woodhall-sets-new-utah-state-400-m-record

Baby nats wrote:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=53X-C4DusNc

Splits I got per 100 based on the video. 10.70, 10.29, 12.30, 11.46 = 44.77 (200 splits of 20.99 and 23.76)

so please enough with the crap about how he cant accelerate fast. look at the video of his open 400 too. he always splits the fastest on his 2nd 100 and his second fastest split is his opening 100. there is NO way you can tell me that any other runner can run almost an entire second faster on his 4th 100 from his 3rd 100. stop saying these springs arent an advantage, please. he doesnt have muscles to get tired, and has blades that act as muscles. its not like hes doing anything wrong or illegal, and quite frankly he is fast even without the advantage of the blades. but dont pretend they arent an advantage

uhh.. I was the 3rd placer at NESCACs and have no friends. Fraud story.

Athketes with artificial body parts shouldn’t be allowed to compete against natural athletes. They used to be considered disabled but they are now enabled. This guy would run in the mid 50s if was not enabled. People are arguing that it is not a big deal to run 46 but the pool of athletes with blades is so small that there has not yet been a true 46 second ability guy with blades who will run 40 seconds

To those asking why we haven't seen a sub-43 second prosthetic 400 runner if the technology is so much superior, take a look at these limb loss statistics:

https://www.amputee-coalition.org/limb-loss-resource-center/resources-filtered/resources-by-topic/limb-loss-statistics/limb-loss-statistics/

This link suggests that ~0.5% of Americans are living with a lost limb, and that more than half have been amputated because of vascular disease (suggesting they don't have the physical makeup of a 400m runner). So that's a pool 1/400th the size of the American population at most, without even bothering to take into account that the only successful blade runners we've seen have been double leg amputees, which eliminates single leg amputees, and single and double arm amputees.

Say the technology is worth 2 seconds for an elite 400m runner. There were 12 men in the US who ran sub-45 seconds last year. ~0.0075% of the male population. Divide that by 400. We can see that (roughly) 0.0000001875% of the U.S. population is likely to fit the criteria of elite 400m ability and limb loss. And this is without taking into account all the selection bias that comes with choosing amputees!

The other thing to point out is that many of these people who lost limbs lost them later in life.

So you're really just drawing from a talent pool of people who lost both legs before the age of 20.

Cottonshirt wrote:

the evidence that prosthetics offer an advantage is inconclusive, at best...

cheers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blade-runners-do-high-tech-prostheses-give-runners-an-unfair-advantage/

No, not “at best”. Just inconclusive.

From the article.

Researchers who have studied blade prostheses disagree fiercely over the net impact of these pros and cons on overall performance.

The "world record for amputees" argument is not valid. Not 45 second 400m has had both his legs chopped off. 0.0001% of the population has that talent, and none of them have been blade runners (yet).

The fact that they have a disadvantage at 200m and NOT at 400m shows that they are gradually gaining an advantage as distance increases. Watch that kid ACCELERATE as he lopes down the final 100m and you will see that he has an advantage.

John Utah wrote:

No, not “at best”. Just inconclusive.

From the article.

Researchers who have studied blade prostheses disagree fiercely over the net impact of these pros and cons on overall performance.

So why let him compete apples-to-apples until that is figured out? Stupid SJW, everyone-is-included culture.

Anyone who watched either of his races can immediately and obviously see the advantage.

If the same athlete was fitted with huge flippers and dominated swimming events, OF COURSE everybody would call foul. They should be calling foul here too. The blades are CLEARLY an advantage.

The blades are lighter, stronger, and longer than a human shank...and DON'T FATIGUE! Yes, that is a significant advantage.

LOOK at that guy. Have you ever seen anybody with that body type from the knees up run anything NEAR a 44 split? Near a 54 split? Of course it's an advantage, gimme a break.

It should be noted that, in the open 400, Digby was already in the lead going into the home stretch. He put a little more distance on the field during that stretch, but not that much. He ran 46.0x, and 4th place ran 46.9x. It's not like he's running down the whole field in the last 100.

Gary Glitter wrote:

If the same athlete was fitted with huge flippers and dominated swimming events, OF COURSE everybody would call foul. They should be calling foul here too. The blades are CLEARLY an advantage.

The blades are lighter, stronger, and longer than a human shank...and DON'T FATIGUE! Yes, that is a significant advantage.

LOOK at that guy. Have you ever seen anybody with that body type from the knees up run anything NEAR a 44 split? Near a 54 split? Of course it's an advantage, gimme a break.

Good analogy. Great analogy. You wouldn't be allowed to wear flippers in swimming.

I meant to talk about this in the WTW. Maybe next week.

Here is a tweet of the 4 x 400.

Looks like Digby is well aware of his advantage, and if he isn't he needs to go back and listen to what he said...

"My first question to Michel was how Digby was able to cut off more than four seconds in the 400 meters in the six weeks between the end of the high school season and the Paralympic Trials.

Basically, it came down to improved technology and learning how to use it.

The Paralympics won’t be Digby’s first rodeo. He also ran at last year’s IPC World Championships (the parallel event to the IAAF Worlds), held Doha in October. Michel accompanied him, and the two of them looked around at the competition and realized that Digby’s carbon fiber prostheses were seriously outdated. They also had absorbed a lot of wear and tear from football. And while their stiffness was once appropriate for a high school freshman, but were too soft and spongy for the larger, stronger athlete he has become over the last three years.

“They were super-soft”, Digby told me. “It was over-compressing. We weren’t getting the energy return that we were putting into it, which is the whole point of the prosthetic leg.”

One of Digby's new high-tech legs

One of Digby’s new high-tech legs

So Digby got new, updated prostheses, but at first they were not an improvement. The local prosthetician Digby works with is very good at his job, especially at building the “sockets” that Digby’s lower limbs fit into, but had no experience with these kinds of high-tech athletic legs. They simply weren’t oriented in a way to let Digby run up to his potential. He and Michel got help from the USOC in working with the prosthetician in making initial adjustments to get them oriented right. After that, Michel and Digby made trial-and-error adjustments to fine-tune the system, much like a bicycle or auto mechanic would do.

It wasn’t until Digby’s last competition before the Trials that things really started to come together. He finally broke 23 seconds for 200 meters, and he and Michel knew big results were on the horizon."

Digby has run 1:58.74 for 800 meters

Cottonshirt wrote:

the evidence that prosthetics offer an advantage is inconclusive, at best...

cheers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blade-runners-do-high-tech-prostheses-give-runners-an-unfair-advantage/

No lactic acid build-up. Can close the last 100m of a 400m faster than anyone else.

Is it really wrote:

No lactic acid build-up. Can close the last 100m of a 400m faster than anyone else.

Someone doesn't understand basic human physiology.

That was an incredible leg, but let's not miss the fact that he is running on large mechanical springs and so not really competing in the same sport at all.