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5/16/2008

Editor's note: Peter Weyand, formerly of Rice University and now on the faculty at Southern Methodist University, writes in the November 2009 Journal of Applied Physiology that artificial limbs do make it possible to artificially enhance running speeds. The 2008 news release below pertains only to his research investigating the validity of the scientific claims used to justify banning Oscar Pistorius from Olympic competition. As noted by both the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2008 and Weyand later, the specific data presented at the CAS hearing were incomplete and did not support the ban. The release below does not address nor discount the broader possibility that other advantages might exist for a bilateral amputee track athlete like Pistorius.

Study conducted at Rice revives Olympic prospects for amputee sprinter
Experts find no scientific basis for Olympic ban

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Based on a study conducted at Rice University’s Locomotion Laboratory, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has ruled that Oscar Pistorius, a bilateral amputee track athlete, is eligible to participate in competitions to qualify for the 2008 Olympics. If he qualifies for the 2008 Beijing games, Pistorius would be the first disabled athlete ever to run against able-bodied athletes in an Olympic event.

In January, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) banned Pistorius from running in its international races for able-bodied athletes based on a German study that alleged his prostheses gave him an unfair advantage in the 400-meter race.

A world-renowned team of experts in biomechanics and physiology from six universities, including Rice's Peter Weyand, assistant professor in kinesiology, offered to gather more data and conduct further testing of Pistorius on a pro-bono basis. Weyand is a biomechanist and director of Rice's Locomotion Laboratory. Pistorius' lawyers used the research and expert opinions as the foundation for appealing the IAAF decision.

"Our research team unanimously recognized the magnitude of the scientific opportunity that was presented to us," Weyand said. "We also appreciated being in a position to provide our expertise on the increasingly complex challenges scientific and technical advances are posing for organized athletics at many levels."

In February, Pistorius came to Rice to be tested by Weyand, his colleagues and the expert team at the Locomotion Laboratory, a facility designed for the study of relationships between the mechanics of movement, performance, metabolic energy expenditure and metabolic power.

Based on a study conducted at Rice University’s Locomotion Laboratory, the Court of Arbitration for Sport has ruled that Oscar Pistorius, a bilateral amputee track athlete, is eligible to participate in competitions to qualify for the 2008 Olympics. JEFF FITLOW

Weyand and colleagues are leading authorities on the mechanical and physiological basis of locomotor performance and have studied a variety of humans and other animal species through the years. They were charged with gathering data to determine whether Pistorius' prostheses reduced the energy or metabolic cost of running, conferred an enhanced ability to hold speed over long sprint races or provided a mechanical advantage for sprinting.

"Experimentally, the ability to compare a bilateral amputee with lower limb prostheses to runners with fully biological limbs is extremely informative," Weyand said. "Equally powerful is the ability to conduct tests while controlling all other variables and changing the subject's legs."

That data was then analyzed by members of the expert team, which was led by Professor Hugh Herr of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab. The scientific team was asked to evaluate the IAAF's initial claim that the Cheetah Flex-Foot prostheses (J-shaped, high-performance prostheses used for running) worn by Pistorius give him an advantage over able-bodied runners.

"Based on the data collected at Rice, the blades do not confer an enhanced ability to hold speed over a 400m race," Weyand said. "Nor does our research support the IAAF's claims of how the blades provide some sort of mechanical advantage for sprinting."

The team unanimously agreed, concluding that the scientific evidence put forth by the IAAF investigation to ban Pistorius was fundamentally flawed.

Peter Weyand, right, assistant professor in kinesiology, offered to gather more data and conduct further testing of Pistorius on a pro-bono basis. JEFF FITLOW

"While an athlete's performance in sprints of short duration is determined almost entirely by mechanical factors, races of longer duration depend on both mechanical and metabolic factors," said Herr, a bilateral amputee who heads the MIT Media Lab's Biomechatronics research group.

"The study commissioned by the IAAF claimed that Pistorius has a 25 percent energetic advantage at 400m race speeds. That claim is specious because anaerobic energy supply cannot be quantified," said Rodger Kram, professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The team's findings were presented to the CAS in Lausanne, Switzerland, April 29-30 by Herr and Kram. Those findings are being submitted for peer review and publishing now that the legal case has been settled.

In addition to Herr, Weyand and Kram, the panel of experts included Professor Matthew Bundle from the University of Wyoming, an expert in the energetics and mechanics of sprinting performance; Craig McGowan, from the University of Texas at Austin, a leading authority on muscle, tendon and joint mechanics; Alena Grabowski, from MIT, an expert in human locomotor energetics and biomechanics; and Jean-Benoît Morin from the University of Saint-Etienne, an expert in the mechanics of human running performance.

None received compensation for their research or participation in the hearing. Pistorius was represented by the international law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf on a pro-bono basis.