Should this guy able to compete against normal people?

Your deviating from the OP. Now your bringing up something else that really isn't involved with this controversy at all. You should start another post about this I would think so that it too can be addressed by everyone that wants to have a say.

 

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Why, is that illegal or unsportsmenlike in any way? Also, gymnast girls pretty much in any country start out at 5-6...

But if you want to talk unfair, compare a sponsored American swimmer who always have a free line to train and the best of everything with other countries' athletes who may have a fool time job to support themselves. How is that fair in your universe??? It is called REALITY...

 

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That's the opposite of a logical argument. They didn't rule simply that "devices" are allowed; they tested Oscar to make sure his prostheses did not give him a net advantage. I mean, we already have technology that could theoretically make a handicapped person faster than a runner, and no one has even suggested that it be allowed in the competition. You don't hear people clamoring to let quadriplegics strap into cigarette boats so they can compete against Michael Phelps in the 400m freestyle. What we're talking about here is technology that allows an athlete to compete on equal footing with the able-bodied, nothing more.

 

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But we can only be told what the athlete wants us to know, isn't that true? If I were to know that something gave me an advantage, like the device that he uses really does give him an advantage but he doesn't let on, anyone could use devices that they only say doesn't help when it really could.

 

It's not up to him to let on. Pistorius' performance was tested in a lab--several times--because of concerns over his perceived advantages on the track. It's not as if someone else will walk in with a new high-tech prosthesis and the committee will simply ask him if they're on the up and up. Before they're ever allowed to race against able-bodied athletes, they will be forced to submit to testing.

 

But anyone could just limit themselves as to what they are being tested for. They can either run as hard as they can or not during the testing.

 

See, comments like that only prove how uninformed people on your side of this debate are. How long have you been involved in this conversation while deciding to not follow any of the pertinent links or read any of the pertinent information? How exactly do you think these tests are conducted, and what do you think they're looking for? Top speed? The tests Oscar Pistorius submitted to tested his fatigue rate, his energy expenditure, and his oxygen intake, as well as his running motion. If those things tested outside of the norm, they were marks against him. So even if someone could get away with tricking the system, they'd only be hurting their cause by showing that "Oh, look, this runner doesn't expend as much energy or consume as much oxygen, and he doesn't fatigue at all," and getting banned from competition as a result.

 

But they are measuring net advantage by reference to the other runners. What's the sense of letting the handicapped compete if you are only going to let them be as fast as the "average" Olympic athlete? The average competitor doesn't generally win. By benchmarking him to be to the average you don't necessarily hurt his relay team, but what's the point?

If the point is to make him feel good about himself by letting him be there, but not really making it possible that he's going to win, then that is not really in the spirit of the Olympics as I understand it.

If his leg design should improve by 2016, are we prepared to deny him the opportunity to compete for being "too fast"? He'll likely argue that the improvements in the design of his legs are akin to improvements in the design of other runner's shoes and training regimens, and how do we really distinguish those, which we don't even bother benchmarking? Maybe we should just benchmark everyone (or return to the days where all athletes competed naked). The main difference used to be "anyone can adopt the same new technologies in shoes and training...but that is no longer the case for shoes, as Pistorius cannot use them.

The Olympics are supposed to be something different than a self-esteem booster for the handicapped. The best we can do is keep benchmarking Pistorious, and keep limiting his speed before letting him compete. In a strange way, I have to hope that he never happens to win an official race in any single athlete competition, as the other athletes are going to cry foul and blame his "advantage" for their loss.

 

Speed has nothing to do with it. It's about physical advantage--is he breathing as much? Is he expending as much energy? How are his running mechanics?--not speed. And it also isn't about other runners, per se. They are measuring biometric levels and comparing them to what one would expect of an elite athlete--ie, someone of peak physical conditioning. The athlete in question might happen to be the fastest runner or best swimmer, but that's not what's important to the tests. They would simply need to know if their prostheses are making the race/meet/game/whatever easier for them than would be the case if they had all of their limbs.

Which should suggest to you that your assessment of this situation is incorrect.

You're fixated on speed, but that's never been what this is about. Hopefully you'll actually pay attention to what I wrote this time, and you will be disabused of this fallacy.

Nonsense, of course. You should really be embarrassed for saying something so ignorant. Thank goodness for internet anonymity, eh?

 

Hardly nonsense, but thank heavens for internet anonymity making you bold enough to be condescending, eh? Even if you think I am wrong, you are simply rude. It's likely that, were I wrong, any misconceptions could be corrected. Alas, it is unlikely that there will ever be a cure for being a jerk. Hopefully, you are simply having a bad day, as we all do from time to time, rather than displaying a more general and persistent character trait.

Snide remarks skirting the arguments aside, I still maintain that this process is adding far too much complication and subjectivity (as evidenced by the fact that he was previously disallowed from competing only to have that view reconsidered). Any win by a mechanically assisted athlete will always be the subject of fan and competitor debate, just as the prowess of steroid using athletes is.

 

Being wrong isn't what makes your comment ignorant, nor why you should feel some degree of shame. However, your misconceptions have been corrected several times in this thread, and you have simply chosen to ignore the points raised. Willful ignorance is something to be embarrassed about.

If you don't like being condescended to, perhaps you shouldn't act in a way that attracts it.

 

Zing.

Dealt with? Not in any fashion that is convincing. In any event, I bow to your genius. Note that refusing to deal with your poor attitude does not in any way suggest that your position is correct. Especially here, as there is no objectively correct answer to this question, as I hope you realize.

The moral victory, of course, is mine, for remaining civil.

 

I didn't say it had been dealt with. I said it had been corrected. What you do with that information is up to you. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it think.

I don't claim that my "attitude" makes me correct. I only assert that mine is a response to yours. And while there is no single correct answer to this question, it isn't because there are no right answers, rather that there are many right answers. I offered one, you didn't. All you did was display a gross ignorance of the subject. I don't get involved in economics debates for precisely this reason.

And in what way was I not civil? You say I was rude and intimated that I have an attitude problem, and all I said was that you should be embarrassed for saying something ignorant. We both simply pointed out things we saw in the other's posts.

 

Hope is a 4 letter word. I told him the same on page 2, you would think he would get it by now... I just gave up on him...

 

Well said.

 

If you really don't see it, then I'd be quite surprised. If so, that is on you that is on you to ponder (and if you so desire, to correct). The truth is that I'm sure you're perfectly civil in person, and the internet has made you bold enough to ignore the normal psychological restraints and social niceties.

 

This thread is still going on? I thought it was already clear that this athlete has every right to run in these competitions.

 

The fact that you have derailed the conversation to this level only shows how weak your argument was. Rather than admit "Hey, you're right, I was wrong," you've taken this into a ridiculous discussion of who is being more civil in the process. You must enjoy the smell of subterfuge in the morning, eh?

It isn't about opinions--you can disagree with me about "the spirit" of the games all you like--but about facts. You are factually wrong about benchmarking, testing, and what the actual concerns are regarding the use of prosthetic limbs. You are free to have your own opinion, and while I think you're being shortsighted and unfair about it, I can't say you're objectively wrong--where I can and have corrected you are on the facts of this matter, and it is from that which you've run crying about who isn't being nice to you.

Grow up.

It is, and has been for pages. Certain posters have decided to let their bigotry cloud their vision, however.

 

Fine then, as I explained the benchmarking was BS and based on the average of Olympic athletes. I was oversimplifying to reference speed alone, but to take a different criteria, there is no way to objectively benchmark how efficiently a man exerting himself in a race without referring to how efficiently other athletes do the same. They measure his performance, and then, lacking any other way of benchmarking, they compare that to relevant peers, hence keeping him in a similar range as his competitors. But in setting the standard of efficiency set by those peers they are inevitably influences by the average result of the peer group. I suppose they could have used the highest or lowest scoring peer as the relevant benchmark, but my understanding 9iuncontradicted thus far) is that they used a wider range of data, suggesting they used either a average or median level.

There is no objective source of human performance against which to measure Mr. Pistorius's attributes other than to compare him to actual humans, a point I think you have missed. We cannot query God and set the perfect benchmarks without looking at actual athletic performances. They then have to limit the set of humans under observation to a particular class of elite athletes, which is itself a subjective determination (perhaps just Olympic caliber athletes, but what about finalists who just missed the cut? Semi-finalists?). The might then have decided to focus on the mean, medium or some other reference rate for that performance, chosen again subjectively.

I sincerely doubt that a win by Pistorius (or his team) wouldn't have raised a few concerns about the fairness of those determinations. In light of the subjectivity inherent in such benchmarking.

I will take it under advisement.

 

Every test requires a control. How else were they supposed to tell whether his levels were normal or not? You're objecting to standard scientific procedure.

No, you were not oversimplifying anything, you were simply wrong about the kind of testing they were doing. You didn't bother to read any of the material and simply assumed speed was what mattered. The jig is up: why try to cover it now?

Who else is his supposed to be compared to, if not other high-caliber athletes? I don't understand the complaint here. That's the only relevant group. It wouldn't matter if his oxygen intake was lower than that of an average person if most athletes of his ilk shared that trait. They're comparing him to the kind of people he's competing against. What would there be to complain about?