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Amputee Is German Long Jump Champion
hweimer (709734) writes "German long jumper Markus Rehm has written sports history yesterday, becoming the first disabled athlete to win a national able-bodied championship. His jump to 8.24 meters put him on the 9th place of the current season rankings and make him egligible to compete in the upcoming European championships, further sparking the debate whether his prosthetic leg provides him with an unfair advantage."
From TFA
Rehm runs and jumps with a specially designed blade that is 15 inches longer than his other leg
I can't imagine why anyone would accuses him of 'cheating' ...
The device is like a spring, so it stores energy as well as having extra length and mechanical advantage, and better still its far stronger and requires much more force to break.
I'm sorry he lost his leg, but there is no why this is 'fair' by any sense of the word.
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Just like car racing, we need different divisions for athletics. One for stock, unmodified humans like us. No drugs, etc. And the "top fuel" division for prosthetics, hormones, steroids, etc. My interest in several sports (bicycling, weightlifting) has already died because of rampant drug abuse. Heck, if you don't do drugs then you won't even qualify for televised events. It's sort of like F1 racing, it's not really a competition between humans, it's a competition between scientists.
Ever since the Olympics went professional, it's been boring. Of course, once these two divisions have been established, the athletes will still cheat in the stock division. Because there's money involved. Even the Korean Starcraft players cheat for the same reason.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Eventually prosthetics will get so good that they'll let athletes achieve much better results than any unmodified human. When it happens everybody will see that the only way to go is different categories for different equipments. We are bound by compassion and politically correctness until we get to that point, so how to address this problem now? Call me hard hearted but I'd still apply my reasoning and enforce different categories right now even if we are in doubt of who's getting an advantage at the moment.
What are you talking about?
You could easily design a similar advantagous device and attach it to your perfectly fine leg. Yet that is not allowed (for good reasons I'd say).
If there's a distinct non-human advantage to them, yes. Most sports are extremely tightly regulated, mainly I've looked at the Nordic sports and for example the jump suit used in ski jumping is highly regulated. Likewise in ice skating, they proved some years ago a "Donald Duck" like suit would improve skate times. It was banned. The support biathlon athletes can get while shooting is likewise regulated. The rules themselves are arbitrary, as long as they're equal for everyone. Why it is "three strikes, you're out" in baseball? Couldn't it be one strike? Five strikes? Sure it could, but the game says three. And then you compete under the rules of the game. Everything else is the other way around, they're allowed to wear baseball caps because everyone can wear one and it doesn't favor anyone in particular. You can't call ut unaided because bicyclists obviously outpace runners, pole vaulters outjump high jumpers and so on but the aid is considered neutral. Anything that isn't you ban.
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Egg lig ibble? Really? Egg lig ibble?
I understand that the title "Slashdot Editor" is intended largely for comedic effect... I hope. Perhaps we could just get the place renamed to Slapstick.com ...oh, that's taken. How about Slapdash.com, that seems to be up for sale.
That isn't true. Sports don't exist to be elitist and show others that you're better than they are.
That is the definition of "competition".
You find competition in everything whether you are talking elite coders, spelling bee champions, among sales people and amongst companies.
Some people said Steve Jobs was "elitist".
Competition brings out those characteristics. Sports is a way that it is done where the arena is physical prowess.
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If you watch the jump carefully you'll notice that he takes off (launches) from the prosthetic leg. I wouldn't be complaining too much if he took off from his real leg.
Look at the kangaroo, a kangaroo has a very long Achilles tendon. This allows them to be very efficient in jumping buy storing up so much energy when it stretches out like a rubber band enabling them to jump very far with very little effort. Humans on the other hand, have very short achilles tendons and therefore do not have this mechanical advantage.
When landing, the impact force and weight of the this guy is absorbed by active elastic stretch of the prosthetic. When he jumps, the weight is accelerated by a recoil force due to elastic recoil of the the prosthetic. This recoil force is much greater than that of what our our achilles tendon plus the active contraction of our calf muscle can do.
This guy has the equivilant of a 15inch long achilles tendon. As if you look at the video when he actually makes the jump, you'll see the prosthetic "foot" is bent 90 degrees from it's normal angle. The human achilles tendon is a) not 15in long and b) doesn't bend 90 degrees.
As a side note, I would assume there is no "fatigue" or decrease in "springiness" of the prosthetic between his first, second and third jumps. He could always show up to an event with a brand new prosthetic.
He's cheating.
That is quite possibly the worst interpretation of scripture that I've seen in a while. Even people who don't buy into it are quite capable of realizing that what you're suggesting the passage means has nothing to do with what it was intended to mean.
I'm not sure if this is just ignorance, a failed attempt to be funny, or a troll. If it's the latter, bravo to you as it appears as though it's worked rather well.
One thing that keeps runners from "opting into" this prosthetic is that mainstream surgeons are forbidden to perform elective amputations.
I'd think that the main thing that keeps runners from "opting into" prosthetics is that most people don't want their fucking legs cut off.
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Athletes regularly have laser surgery to improve their vision to 20/10 or better. Baseball hitters in particular claim that it gives them an advantage in terms of being able to see the spin on the ball sooner. Should that be allowed?