In 2007, South African double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius
became the first disabled athlete to compete against able-bodied
runners, placing seventh in the British Grand Prix. But his
J-shaped carbon-fiber prostheses, called the Össur Flex-Foot
Cheetah, sparked a debate within the athletic world: Do the
devices give him an unfair advantage over able-bodied
competitors? The answer, according to a new study of six amputee
sprinters, is no. Scientists debate whether the Össur Cheetah
boosts performance. Some experts believed that Pistorius's setup
would allow him and other amputee sprinters to move their legs
faster than able-bodied runners and reach high speeds more
easily. But last summer, a team of researchers at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge showed
that Pistorius's prosthetic limbs didn't generate as much force
against the ground as biological legs. Biomechanicist Alena
Grabowski, a member of the MIT lab, and colleagues wanted to
find out if these results were true for ampu