Now see this:



2003: American Marlon Shirley became the first leg amputee to break the 10 second barrier for the 100 meters.

2005: Oscar Pistorius clocked a 21.4 for the 200m and 47.34 for the 400m which simply thrashed the gold medal winning time in the men’s 400m event at the 1928 Olympics.



If we go by this rate of improvement, a leg amputee could possibly qualify for the 2012 Olympics. Thanks to carbon fiber Flex Foot that’s ready to take the sporting world by storm.



But as prosthetic leg is a “support device” and the athletes using them, as claimed and debated, can never qualify for Olympics sprints. On the other side they’re physically “challenged” and hence given a chance to prove with an artificial leg that parallels natural one, and that is, we’ll know will not be acceptable as amputated athletes will always be considered as “assisted” with an external device.



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