At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Nike aired the previous commercial about Oscar Pistorius. It raises two key factors in the debate which surrounded his eligibility to compete against able-bodied runners. Should we allow extraordinary individuals like Pistorius to compete, and is he in fact running?
The implication of the commercial is that he should compete and he is running, but many people would disagree.
Pistorius’s comment about motor-cross “not being for people like [him],” hints toward one argument against his admission to able-bodied competitions: safety.
Many people worry about the risks, for both Pistorius and other competitors, if he were to fall. Josh McHugh, a reporter who wrote about Pistorius for Wired Magazine, said it looks more like a wipe-out when he falls, but even if the risks are more severe, should we ban him from able-bodied competitions only? Shouldn’t his Cheetahs (prosthetic legs) be banned from the paralympics too?
The common use of Cheetahs hasn’t caused significant safety issues in the paralympics (at least not enough to ban them), and able-bodied competitors would probably be more agile than his paralympic peers at avoiding Pistorius, anyway. The safety argument, at least it seems to me, should not be a determining factor in Pistorius, or anyone else’s, case.
But the other question (Is Pistorius really running?) is harder to answer.
Patricia Zettler, in Is it Cheating to use Cheetahs?, came up with one definition of running which she said Pistorius definitely met:
Like an able-bodied athlete, he steps as fast as he can to get across the finish line in as little time as possible.
Zettler also highlighted that the Cheetahs would not change the strategy of other runners. These two components are definitely part of running as a sport, but may not be complete.
As someone in Dr. Matt Brown’s class pointed out, running seems to also imply the use of feet and legs. For instance, adding stilts might fulfill the two requirements of running (You are stepping across the finish line as fast as you can, and so is everyone else), but it would not be running in the way we view the competition now, since actual feet are not touching the ground. At what point does Pistorius’s prostheses go from “feet” to springs, stilts, or pegs?
I’m inclined to argue that Pistorius is running on a replacement for feet, and thus the Cheetahs should be considered feet. To me, he is running, but the definition should be more formally hashed out in case of further applications to the Olympics by disabled “runners.”