The Blade Runner

“Michael Johnson opens mouth again, calls out Oscar Pistorius”

This is the headline that caught my attention on the interwebs last night. Since I find local news difficult to watch, I prefer to read actual articles about current events. Is it just me, or is it hard to find articles to read online these days. Everything is a video, or a podcast or a slideshow. What happened to reading?! 

Yeah, yeah, I know. Get a newspaper. But newspapers are ginormous and inconvenient to read. 

And they smell weird.

This header had me completely intrigued. So many questions:

What does Michael Johnson have against the Oscars?
Has his jaw been wired shut?! Is opening it heroic? *

How is Pistorius pronounced?

Is a Pistorius a dinosaur?

   

Basically, prior to reading the article I had decided that Michael Johnson had jaw surgery, and upon finally being able to re-open his mouth, chose to call up and chat with a Jurassic version of the Academy Awards. 

Yeah, yeah, I know. I get stupider every day.

The “article” was actually a post on an Olympic Blog for Yahoo!News. Hey, much love for bloggers…as, obviously, I am one. To summarize, Michael Johnson feels that Oscar Pistorius has an unfair advantage and should not be allowed to compete in the track & field portion of the Olympics. Okay….do you need a little more background?!

Turns out that Oscar Pistorius is a South African sprinter and (wait for it…) a double amputee. 

Say whaaa? Yes, initial thoughts on this new information are likely scattered all over the place. Take a moment to ponder those scattered thoughts, then note this new information: Pistorius runs on artificial legs called Cheetah Flex-Foot Blades, which are carbon fiber, 16 inch J-shaped limbs weighing in at just over a pound each.

And now we’re kind of getting to the point. Johnson believes that Pistorius’ “blades” give him an advantage over athletes with non-prosthetic legs. I’m not sure I disagree with him. Apparently, in 2008, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) absolutely did agree with him, as Pistorius was disqualified from the Olympic Games that year for having unfair advantage.

Some have speculated that the IAAF intentionally hired a biased specialist for their investigation preceding the disqualification of Pistorius, one who only looked at the advantages, rather than the whole picture. Pistorius appealed the decision, but it was not until the 2012 Games that became eligible.

After doing a minimal amount of research, I learned that these Flex-Foot Blades are designed to spring off the ground, giving a return on energy of up to 95%, while a human ankle maxes out at around 60%. Additionally, Pistorius (aka Blade Runner**) will use 25% less energy to run on his prosthesis than an able bodied runner. There was also a lot of sciencey stuff that I kind of blanked out on.

It is also true, that these blades don’t have actual muscles in them, so the athlete must rely more on hip muscles to, specifically, make turns on the track. I will point out that, from what I understand, the Blade Runner’s event utilizes a small portion of curved track at the very beginning of the race.

Additionally, Pistoruis’ blades create less up and down bouncing when he runs, which means his stride is more mechanically efficient than that of a runner on their own legs.  

Of course I also feel there is less freedom when you are running on legs who’s interior stuff (I don’t know…muscles, joints and tendons ?) can’t be controlled by your mind. (Not like, in a Jedi way…but you get what I mean.)

Also, I'm certain that my legs, which have very little muscle, weigh more than one pound each...to go all theoretical, I'd imagine that since muscle weighs more than fat, most sprinters' legs weigh more than one pound.  When they are born.

Clearly, I am no expert on the matter. My initial response is that he does have an unfair advantage in this arena, but I could be proven wrong. 

Even if I could take the technical stuff (facts…whatever) out of it, I can’t help but feel like athletes run in such a way as to limit injury. An ankle injury could put a runner out indefinitely, and an Olympic athlete competing in, say three events would be finit-o on all of them if they suffered an injury in the first event. In theory, if Pistoruis broke a blade, he could toss it out and attach a new one, with no delay in return to competition. While yes, Pistoruis could sustain an injury to another part of his leg or body, he is not susceptible to three of the five most common injuries (Knee Injuries, Shin Splints, Ankle Sprains, Foot Injuries and Hip Bursitis) of athletes competing in his event: sprinting. 

If an athlete is not capable of sustaining as many injuries, I feel that absolutely he has an advantage in his ability to push to limits others don’t for risk of damaging or ending their careers.  

Think of it this way: When you were a young and fearless child, before you really understood about injury, or kids getting snatched, or whatever, you were probably faster and more daring, pushing limits, exploring and doing things that as an adult seem just plain risky. Because in your niave, child-brain, there was no risk.

Of course, because I’m a skeptic, I immediately began to think of all the ways that allowing this runner to compete opens doors to all kinds of madness. To be extreme, what if, say, as a child I lost my feet in a tragic tonka-truck accident and when having prosthetics created, I decided to have flipper-fins built into my bionic feet so one day I could be the fastest swimmer this side of sea level. Would I be allowed to compete?   Don't get me wrong...I would lose.  In order to accomplish that, something would have had to have been done about my extreme lack of coordination and/or athletic ability. But still….

I’m also confused. Didn’t the IAAF ban a certain type of swimsuit because it created an unfair advantage?

Still, the weirdest thing about the entire article was the unnecessary implication that Michael Johnson was just being a total jerkface, spouting off some kind of trash talk. Clearly, this is a highly controversial topic. I think an Olympic Gold Medalist is fully justified in weighing in on the topics of his sport. His comments were not inflammatory:

“I consider Oscar a friend of mine, but he knows I am against him running, because this is not about Oscar; it's not about him as an individual, it is about the rules you will make and put in place for the sport which will apply to anyone, and not just Oscar."

Uh…that seems totally reasonable and appropriate to me, yet the blogger rips into Johnson for his remarks. He admits that Oscar Pistorius’ Olympic berth is a controversial topic, but also notes that “It is also a compelling reason for Johnson to open his mouth.” Erm…okay.

Before I can get a cold shower going to chill this guy out, the writer goes on to say:

Never, ever mock a
man's shoes.

“A track diva if there ever was one, Johnson was one of the first runners to wear gold cleats in competition. Now, with the spotlight moved firmly to the likes of Pistorius and Usain Bolt, maybe Johnson misses all the attention he got while collecting gold medals in Atlanta. Maybe he's worried about a disabled athlete overtaking his world record down the line.

Either way, we can't wait to hear what he has to say next. Whenever the next track controversy pops up, we'll surely hear his opinion. If there isn't one, he'll probably make up his own.

And when it happens, we'll be listening. Thank you, Michael.”

This blogger must have a deep seeded disgust for Johnson that began brewing long before he made these statements. For a dude, he seems to hold a grudge as well as a woman would. (I can say that, I’m a woman.) There’s not many other explanations for why the writer would take the widely accepted opinions of a veteran of the sport and stage them as jealous and attention seeking, not to mention implying that he is so attention seeking that he will create controversy just to have an opinion on it.

Look, I wasn’t there, so I’m not sure how the issue came up. Did Johnson hold a press conference and invite the media so he could present his opinion on the use of prosthetics in the Olympics? Was he responding to a reporter’s question? It doesn’t really matter.

I suppose the blogger knew his catchy headline would produce hits to his post, which it did…though most people likely went looking for a Michael Johnson scandal, rather than my quest for closure on the Michael Johnson had jaw surgery, and upon finally being able to re-open his mouth, chose to call up and chat with a Jurassic version of the Academy Awards issue.

In an eerie turn of events, it appears that this writer has fulfilled a blog-prophecy of sorts with his launch against Johnson by “making up his own controversy where there isn’t one."

Spooooooky.

* When I was 18 I had my wisdom teeth removed, and the oral surgeon severed a nerve in my jaw. This caused elephant-man like swelling, causing my jaw to barely open, and eventually, the permanent inability to taste or feel the right side of my mouth. The high tech physical therapy the surgeon prescribed? Put two tongue depressors between my upper and lower teeth and then start sliding more tongue depressors between the original two until my jaw opened all the way. Uh…okay? This was not fun.

** Have you seen the movie Blade Runner? Probably, so I’m not going to go into the strangeness of the movie or the unfounded terror that I am actually a Nexus-6 model Replicant who thinks I’m human and will eventually be hunted down and “retired” by Harrison Ford. I do want to note the movie was made in the year 1982 and based in 2019, and the future is not looking the way Blade Runner promised it would be. There’s no android population, or colonies on Mars, or flying police cars. I don’t think 37 years was far enough into the future for this concept.  I guess in all fairness, today we do have origami unicorns and eyeball factories (probably)…so that’s something.