Exclusive: Pistorius is getting "F1 advantage" and should not compete in Olympics, says South African sports scientist
Sunday, 14 August 2011

By Mike Rowbottom

Oscar_Pistorius_Hungary_June_30_2011August 14 - The Court of Arbitration for Sport's (CAS) decision to allow South Africa's multiple Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius to compete against able-bodied athletes was "a complete farce", according to a fellow South African sports scientist, Dr Ross Tucker, who compares the technological advances involved in making Pistorius's prosthetic blade "legs" to those in Formula One.

As Pistorius, a double amputee who races on carbon fibre prosthetics known as Cheetahs, prepares to race at the World Athletics Championships which start in Daegu later this month, Tucker has offered insidethegames new background to the scientific debate that took place in 2008, when the CAS discounted evidence suggesting that the South African gained an unfair advantage from the technology available to him in the light of a subsequent scientific study.

"I don't think he should be running," Tucker, a senior lecturer with the University of Cape Town's Exercise Science and Sports Medicine Department, told insidethegames.