In the last article, I gave a thorough overview on the early life of Oscar Pistorius, the amputee runner who has been quiet in the limelight in the past weeks after the world athletics governing body, IAAF, decided to bar him from competing in the forthcoming 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Pistorius had wanted to be the first amputee runner to compete in the Olympics. Despite his immense will and motivation, he is facing resistance from the IAAF, as the latter has decided to bar him on the grounds that the technology of his prosthetics may give him an unfair advantage over sprinters using their natural legs.

In today’s article I will continue to delve into the matter and I will discuss the tests carried out in germany last November and the subsequent IAAF decision. As also expressed in the previous article, I am basing my articles on a number of professional reports and articles that have come out in the past days.

Ever since Pistorius made his wish to compete in the 2008 Olympics public, the highly important question persisted, do prosthetic legs simply level the playing field for Pistorius, compensating for his disability, or do they give him an inequitable edge via what some call ‘techno-doping’?

The tests (to analyse the effectiveness of the “Cheetah” blades that Pistorius uses compared with the human lower limb) were carried out last November (Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th) at the Institute of Biomechanics and Orthopaedics at the German Sports University in Cologne and were led by Professor Gert Peter Brüggemann, the head of the institute.

Politics were always expected to have a big say and Bruggeman from the outset stated that his team will only produce the data and then it will be the IAAF to make the final decision whether Pistorius could compete in IAAF-recognised events, including the Olympic Games.

Historically, the IAAF has placed limits on devices that assist athletes. It prohibits an array of performance-enhancing drugs and it does not allow wheelchair athletes into the Olympic marathon, given that wheels provide a clear advantage in speed. Earlier last year the ruling body introduced a ban on technical aids, although it claimed the move was not specifically aimed at Pistorius.

The IAAF had said that runners with technical aids could not compete in able-bodied races and banned the use of any device incorporating springs, wheels “or any other element that provides the user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device”. The stark truth was that visions of athletes using mechanical aids to improve performances had prompted the IAAF to amend its rules.

Pistorius lobbied extensively against that decision and to have the opportunity to have tests to prove the aids he uses were fair.

Pistorius, known as “Bladerunner” because he runs on two carbon-fibre J-shaped legs, spent two intensive days in Cologne alongside five able-bodied athletes of a similar standard to him. These latter five athletes were capable of running 400 metres in about Pistorius’s personal best of 46.34sec, which was recorded in the heats of the South African National Championships, an able-bodied race, in March 2007.

Brüggemann’s tests were instigated and paid for by the IAAF at a cost of e30,000 after they had collected evidence in July (in Italy) that suggested that Pistorius was running in a significantly different way to able-bodied runners. In fact, the IAAF’s contention was that Pistorius is the only 400 metres runner in history to run his second 200 metres faster than his first.

The tests (carried out by a team of more than 10 scientists, including staff from the physiology laboratory of Professor Mester from the Institute of Training Science and Sport Informatics), were witnessed by three IAAF representatives, namely Dr Elio Locatelli (a director of the governing body), Imre Matharazi (a technical manager), and Frederic Sánchez (a cameraman) as well as two representatives from Pistorius’s camp, Peet van Zyl, his agent, and Knut Lechler, a director of Ossur, the company that produces his prosthetics.

On the first morning, Pistorius ran a maximum-effort 400 metres on an outdoor track, wearing a mask that measures oxygen and carbon dioxide during inhalation and exhalation, to test aerobic capacity. (All the athletes ran the 400m test with a K4 mask to record max VO2 and blood lactate records were taken regularly.)

In the afternoon there was, what was probably, the most important test, namely the indoor sprints over four pressure plates (used to record ground reaction forces and point of force application) on a 100-metre track, with 12 infrared motion-controlled cameras (filming at 250 frames per second) to record 3D kinematics and four high-speed cameras. Pistorius ran four sprints over 80 metres and one over about 40 metres before a painful knee forced him to stop.

Reflective nodules were placed along Pistorius’s upper legs and blades and similarly on the other athletes’ legs. The infrared cameras captured these from all sides. The four high-speed cameras at the side produced a slow-motion image of the blade hitting the pressure plate.

From these two sets of data, all the forces can be compared between the able-bodied athletes’ leg and the Cheetah blades. Ossur contends that Pistorius’s legs give him only between 60 and 70% of the energy return of the natural lower limb.

Just two weeks ago, midway through January, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced their decision. Oscar Pistorius was ruled ineligible to compete at this summer's Olympic Games because his prosthetic limbs give him an unfair advantage and were technical aids in clear contravention of IAAF rules.

As such, they contravened the IAAF's rule 144.2 that forbids the use of any technical device incorporating springs, wheels “or any other element that provides the user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device”.

The study, according to the same IAAF, revealed that Pistorius used less energy than able-bodied runners to run at the same speed. Professor Peter Bruggemann's research concluded an athlete using the “Cheetah prosthetic” could run at the same speed as able-bodied athletes but uses about 25% less energy.

The tests also revealed that running with prosthetic blades led to less vertical motion combined with 30% less mechanical work for lifting the body. The report concluded that the returned energy from the prosthetic blades was close to three times higher than that of the ankle joint.

“With all due respect, we cannot accept something that provides advantages,” said Elio Locatelli of Italy, the director of development for the IAAF, urging Pistorius to concentrate on the Paralympics that will follow the Olympics in Beijing. “It affects the purity of sport. Next will be another device where people can fly with something on their back.”

Foremost among the IAAF’s concerns is that Pistorius’s prosthetic limbs may make him taller than he would have been on natural legs and may unfairly lengthen his stride, allowing him to lower his best times by several seconds in the past three years, while most elite sprinters improve by hundredths of a second.

IAAF officials also fear that, without limits on technological aids, able-bodied runners could begin wearing carbon-fibre plates or other unsuitably springy devices in their shoes.

There have been various critics to this decision. Robert Gailey, an associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Miami Medical School and who has studied amputee runners, was quoted, “I pose a question for the IAAF. Are they looking at not having an unfair advantage? Or are they discriminating because of the purity of the Olympics, because they do not want to see a disabled man line up against an able-bodied man for fear that if the person who does not have the perfect body wins, what does that say about the image of man?”

In defending his criticism, according to Gailey, a prosthetic leg returns only about 80 per cent of the energy absorbed in each stride, while a natural leg returns up to 240 per cent, providing much more spring.

In next week’s article, I will look deeper in the reactions to the IAAF’s decisions.