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11/13/09
Great article though. True fairness in competition is pretty impossible though. The best they can do is categorize people into very roughly equal groups and have them compete amongst themselves.
The carbon fibre legs are an incredible piece of technology though. The sensation of running on them is pretty hard to imagine and one I've always been oddly curious about. #oscarpistorius
11/13/09
11/13/09
Simona Halep an up and coming tennis star with DD breasts had a reduction so that she could play with less interference:
[www.theregister.co.uk] #oscarpistorius
11/13/09
And what I meant is that you should not use a myth to prove you point of view. #oscarpistorius
11/13/09
Amazons are a part of Greek mythology. They supposedly prevented the growth of the right breast by cauterizing it while young. The author had the side mixed up, but it is most assuredly a true part of the mythology.
11/13/09
The word Amazon is of unknown origin, however a folk etymology popped up which explained the word as being a deriviative of the preface "a-", meaning "without", followed by "mazos", meaning "breast". This folk etymology was supported by the folktale that Amazons cut off one breast to facilitate archery. However, this is most likely a story designed to discourage women from taking up archery. This speculation is supported by even the most casual observation of modern day female archers who are more than capable of using the bow with all breasts intact.
Source: [www.whoosh.org]
The image that says with most people is that of single-breasted women. Sounds like a shocker doesn't it? But a recent survey indicated that single-breasted women with a quiver of arrows slung on their shoulders epitomize the women warriors of the Amazon. According to myth, the Amazons were an all-female society of fierce warriors who supposedly lived in the area north of the Black Sea about 700 years before the fifth century BC. Supposedly they cut off one breast to make shooting a bow and arrow easier. But this has never been proved even in the myths. The word Amazon itself has some connotation with breasts.
Source: [www.buzzle.com] #oscarpistorius
11/13/09
I'll politely disagree with you second claim. [en.wikipedia.org] #oscarpistorius
11/13/09
I think you are reading about the wrong amazons.
11/13/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
This piece was brilliant - interesting, insightful, provocative and most importantly, well written. Thank you Aimee, thank you Gizmodo! #oscarpistorius
11/12/09
11/12/09
In all seriousness, I'll put my vote in for:
Best.Gizmodo.Article. Ever. #oscarpistorius
11/12/09
Very impressed that someone who dedicates so much time to perfecting a sport can also write so well. #oscarpistorius
11/12/09
11/13/09
11/13/09
(See her TED presentation if you don't know what I'm talking about.) #oscarpistorius
11/12/09
11/12/09
11/12/09
I'm an athlete and if I decide to do anything, run, bike, lift weights, etc I must make sure that my body is primed with the correct foods. I must warm and stretch the muscles, and do so repeatedly. If I don't have carbs in my system I may not have muscular power, if I don't have protein, I may not have any at all.
So, an athlete with natural muscles has to worry about and manage their muscles to use them to a high degree. Even then, it's a gamble, a muscle could tear or just crap out during use.
A person with metal limbs does not have to manage any of this, thus they have a bizarre advantage.
11/12/09
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11/12/09
Athletes who are considered "normal" are already "special" thanks to the advanced equipment like the swimsuit or laser eye surgery, thus it is not fair to separate athletes who can compete on a similar level yet aren't considered "normal".
The differences between a runner like Aimee and one who has both their original legs is not able to be attributed to any one factor cleanly. So much is involved in athletic ability that it is unfair to call out only one factor simply because it is more visible. #oscarpistorius
11/12/09
11/12/09
The compromise seems pretty simple: if you willing to amputate limbs to increase athletic performance, there should be no restrictions to your competing. The frustrations one would encounter using a wheelchair everywhere else in the world should be seen a sacrifice far exceeding the proverbial getting up early in the morning to work out. Those 'fortunate' enough to be born without limbs (and in wheelchair racing having lower extremities is a disadvantage having to with weight and chair design) would be the same as a basketball player fortunate enough to be born tall. Or with exceptionally acute vision. Wade Boggs' hitting skills were mostly attributed to that fact.
The cultural exclusion is fascinating -- these athletes are seen less than normal and more than human simultaneously. #oscarpistorius
11/12/09
But I consider one of Ms. Mullins' first assertions far more important than all the handwringing questing here. Namely, that the idea of a 'level playing field' is ludicrous.
Eighty to ninety percent of a person's ability to succeed in high-level competition is pure genetic luck.
Period.
Training, determination, 'courage' - all these smarmy terms we hear constantly in sports talk, are just pablum. Even brutal, professionally supervised training can only improve ones' VO2 max about 10-12 percent. And one's ratio of slow-twitch to fast-twitch muscle fibers is similarly, but not as rigidly fixed. You might as well say that being black is an unfair advantage for sprinters and basketball players.
The average person, even if they were to train hard and continually from pre-teen years, will never have a prayer of coming close to college, olympic, or professional caliber performance. Period. Have tall, thin parents? Then you're "athletic." Born stocky? Then you're "out of shape" regardless of how hard you train and diet.
And it's about time that spectators and the sporting press - like the titled British lords who began the Olympic 'ideals' of amateur sport (considerations of money were sooo banal, after all) - pulled their head out and realized that these people are professional gladiators, and that some flexibility is required when dealing with 'unfair advantages.'
It's ironic that the average sports spectator, or sports governing body executive, thinks nothing of downing supplements, energy drinks or medications in their own recreational pursuits, but goes all moralistic when someone is accused of cheating by taking, say, an asthma medication they need to keep from wheezing.
It's recreation and entertainment, not some ethical purity quest. Ethics are best reserved for far more important subjects, but we tend to obsess most about them when they're applied to trivial pursuits. This gets taken to its most bizarre conclusions in the small-pond debates of Himalayan alpinists. #oscarpistorius
11/12/09