Pogo Stick Olympics

Today, Oscar Pistorius set the bar a little higher, not only for sporting history, but for the integration of physically-challenged athletes in able-bodied events. Bravo to a fine man, for his courage and relentless training, and also for the inspiration he brings to others. In a world driven by images of perfect people, sturdy selves and ideal constitutions, real-life humans like Oscar remind us all that the greatest driving force is plain determination.
 
It is also fair to mention that I cannot really see what all the fuss was about, over Oscar's participating in an able-bodied event in the first place. He lost his legs at 11 months, and if he runs on carbon blades, it is not from a personal choice intended to bring some form of advantage to himself. I would bet that as a youngster, he would have been glad to have been just like his friends, running on flesh and bones. If indeed, these special blades are the finest they can be and bring him the best performance possible, I doubt that the blisters and other likely discomforts they also bring about where their bindings must meet skin, would be the first choice that anyone would make for daily training, over years and years.
 
And, on a more technical note, and although I am no physicist, I recall from basic physics classes that energy cannot be lost or created, but that it simply changes forms, etc. The blades that Oscar uses are driven by his own body, and not powered in any way. As such, any presumed advantage in propulsion must nonetheless come from his own energy input, in the same way that a person using a pogo stick must "invest" a certain amount of energy to gain from the stick's recoil. Personally, I prefer to run on real feet than imagine myself doing the 400m on a pogo, no matter how high-tech or full of carbon it might be.
 
Bravo to Oscar, the "fastest man on no-legs," as many like to call him.
 
Denis Guiet