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No, this is like saying that someone without legs could be faster than someone with them:

http://www.ossur.com/?PageID=13462

Yes, they could be faster. Most people won't cut their legs for getting that through.

Most people also wont learn a new vocal language even when at the end they will be faster like most Americans wont stop eating cheeseburgers even when they are obese. It takes work.

Checking out http://www.ossur.com/prosthetics/feet who make Pistorius's feet, I can't help but wonder about what something like that could do for the able bodied. I spend all day on my feet in a warehouse, & shock absorbing speed & height increasing power boots would be really helpful. Using kinetic energy from body weight & gravity instead of muscles would mean a lot less fatigue too.

I've read nearly all of the comments thus far, and I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in the general lack of clue. I have had a prosthetic right leg for going on 13 years now. This is my third model.

The first was pretty much carbon-fibre, carbon-carbon, and titanium. The foot provided a bit of energy return to simulate the toe-push on pronation, but was not like the real thing.

The second foot added an articulated ankle which aided on uneven terrain, but was still not very lifelike.

The third has similar foot to the first, but added a shock-absorber and a vacuum system. Although this leg has some of the best of the current technology, at the end of the day, it sucks. [1]

Understand that I can walk pretty well. Most days, or when I'm not tired from walking all day long, my gait is indistinguishable from other folks. However, even though my 'foot' does provide *some* energy return, it in no way approaches the muscular push-off normal toes provide when walking. (I expect most folks don't even know or feel that they do this any longer.) Of course, I don't have one of the sprinter foots this runner will use in competition. They are specific to that function and just wouldn't work as daily 'footwear'.

All of that is immaterial. His feet don't 'give him way more energy' than a naturally footed sprinter. They can't. The only energy they store is that which is put there by the runner. I haven't studied his running style, but I expect that he has modified his style to maximize the energy put into the foot, and that the foot unloads the energy back into his lower leg on rolling off of the toe. Now, this is unnatural and required a great deal of training before he mastered it well enough to beat footed sprinters. I call bullshit on the IAAF.

That energy is not 'free'. He's had to train to get more fit than footed runners because his gait will not be a natural bone/muscle gait.

Oh, yeah, aerodynamics my ass...

[1] Compared to a real foot.

I was under the impression that carbon fiber was actually renowned for being inflexible and tending to shatter, rather than deform

All depends on how it is laid up. Sprint Feet prosthetics.

Here is a direct link ot the video. It's WMV format.

There's quite a bit going on both in the academic world and by prosthetics manufacturers. One of the bigger struggles is getting an amputee a prosthetic that's suitable for what they're going to be doing - a foot optimized for running looks a lot different from a foot that's designed to look like a foot and that you'd wear with ordinary footwear.
Without turning this into a shill for our products, the company I work for makes an inertial-sensor based activity monitor that helps doctors choose an appropriate prosthetic depending on the patient's activity profile. This is one of our customers