Katawa Shoujo Forums

No, not the Paralympics, the Olympics. On the top of my head, there are three:

Oscar Pistorius (AKA Emi or "Blade Runner"), South African, uses prosthetics to run. You can check him out @ the 4x400 relay. Unfortunately, there are people claiming that he has an unfair advantage due to the prosthetics =(

Im Dong-Hyun (AKA Kenji), Korean, the guy is legally blind (20/100 R and 20/200 L), but still manages to be a beast in Archery, grabbing two medals at Athens and Beijing (teams, but whatever), and now he's seeking for an individual golden medal.

Natalia Partyka (AKA Miki), Polish, born without the right hand/forearm, uses her left one to play Table Tennis. Has beaten her first contender yesterday. Also ranked 68th in the world.

Yes, I'm looking forward to the Paralympics, but these guys are pretty badass.

i dont get people who claim that those with prosthetics have an unfair advantage in running

seriously, he not only had to learn how to use his legs again, but he also has to keep steady maintenance of them to make sure they dont break down while hes running

and they say he has an unfair advantage? for shame!

yummines wrote:i dont get people who claim that those with prosthetics have an unfair advantage in running

seriously, he not only had to learn how to use his legs again, but he also has to keep steady maintenance of them to make sure they dont break down while hes running

and they say he has an unfair advantage? for shame!

Their complaint is that the legs are more efficient than our natural legs. So if he and an able-bodied athlete put equal power into their thighs, he would get more power out in his running. Obviously this overlooks things like balance, but I don't know the magnitude of these effects to really comment.

yummines wrote:i dont get people who claim that those with prosthetics have an unfair advantage in running

seriously, he not only had to learn how to use his legs again, but he also has to keep steady maintenance of them to make sure they dont break down while hes running

and they say he has an unfair advantage? for shame!

Never mind the fact that there is in fact wear and tear on his actual fleshy bits. They may be called bionic legs, but they really aren't.

I do get what people mean with the difference between prostheses and normal legs, that they're never 100% comparable and thus is going to give an advantage either way.

Im Dong-Hyun is a whole different story, since he has a clear disadvantage due to not being able to see the target as clearly as his competitors. As for Natalia Partyka, she wouldn't be seriously influenced anymore by her disability in table-tennis due to everyone being either right-handed, left-handed or ambidextrous and thus having a preferred batting hand, for Natalia Partyka she is simply forced to use one hand (and is thus left-handed due to a lack of a right hand). They're both not using something to reduce the impact of their disability and thus there shouldn't be any discussion about potential advantages.
But for Oscar Pistorius, his legs behave differently due to the nature of his prosthetics and that will influence his times somehow. But you can't know how it exactly influences his times, because it is nigh impossible to get reliable comparison material at the level of an Olympian runner, due to the impact of losing your legs and the revalidation process (which is going to affect your stamina and such, therefore already influencing your times).

To be frank, I'd try to avoid the whining of competitors either by getting solid proof that Oscar doesn't have a clear advantage by having prosthetics or by not letting Oscar run. The organization running the Olympics wouldn't want to deal with the whining (time-consuming, can be reputation damaging and so on). Not letting Oscar run would also cause issues so best course of action would be getting solid proof that there isn't a clear advantage.