An essay about the deeds of the athletes at the 2012 Olympic Games

The deeds of 2012 London Olympics athlete Pistorius

"Blade Runner": the fastest legless man

Born without fibulas and ankle bones. The area below the knee was amputated at the age of 11 months. At the age of 17, he began to learn to walk with prosthetics. At the age of 16, he practiced track and field. At the age of 17, he wore the famous "Cheetah" sports prosthesis. At the age of 18, he broke the amputation of both legs and one leg. 200m world record in both amputee categories.

August 5, the third competition day of the London Olympics track and field events. The sky over the "London Bowl" is still full of haze, but the bad weather cannot dampen people's enthusiasm - the blade runner, South African Oscar Pistorius, appears on the stage.

This is the second group match of the men’s 400-meter semi-finals. The moment the starting gun sounded, eight athletes on the track shot out like arrows. “Oscar, Oscar!” tens of thousands of spectators in the stands shouted in unison. The cry. Everyone began to accelerate. Pistorius shook his arms vigorously and tried to increase his running frequency. The black "J"-shaped "cheetah" had already integrated with his body. As usual in all races, he started accelerating halfway through the final corner and headed towards the finish line.

But this time was different from usual. He fell behind, was left behind everyone, and was the last one to reach the finish line. The new champion of the Daegu World Championships, James of Grenada, won the first place in the group and set a personal best time of 44.59 seconds this season. But the audience still gave thunderous applause to Oscar, who missed the final. He bowed slightly to the surroundings and then waved.

This is the first time in the 116-year history of the Olympic Games that a disabled athlete with double amputations has participated in track and field competitions. Since the group stage on August 4, he has become the most popular player in the "London Bowl" With his figure, audiences from all over the world will cheer for him. Opponents on the track are proud to compete with him. Off the track, he is the center where various TV stations and print media gather. Since there are too many reporters chasing Oscar, for convenience In response to the demands of reporters who couldn't squeeze into the front row, event organizers even went so far as to install a microphone in the mixed interview area to broadcast Oscar's every word.

"What a strange phenomenon. There has never been an athlete who has attracted more attention than the champion." Some media commented that the Oscar story itself has far exceeded the meaning of a championship title or a record. , this South African boy who had both legs amputated when he was 11 months old surpassed the limits of people's imagination with his amazing athletic talent. A legless "flying man" galloped on the Olympic track, competing with the world's best able-bodied athletes. Athletes compete on the same field.

“If the goal is easy to achieve, then it will not be so exciting. It is the victory that has been achieved through all the hardships that makes me really excited. For me, I really like to challenge people's traditional ideas. When people see a person with a disability, they always focus on one part of his or her disability, and I wanted to overturn their idea that there are always many obstacles on the way to success, a great athlete and a great athlete. The only difference between good athletes is whether you can get around it, overcome it, and subvert it." He explained his sports philosophy in the short film "Beyong Reason" shot for his sponsor Oakley.

The road to the Olympics

The most profound impression Oscar Pistorius left on the public was the famous pair of black "J"-shaped carbon fiber prostheses he wore , the scene of speeding on the track. He is incredibly fast, and the pair of prosthetic legs that resemble a cheetah give him a high-tech feel like a "future soldier." Based on his achievements and image, the media loves to slap various nicknames on him, such as "the fastest man without legs" or, more commonly known as "The Blade Runner".

In the eyes of the media and advertisers, this symbolic image is undoubtedly a packaging method that maximizes the individual characteristics of athletes. However, for Oscar himself, these may not fully reflect him. All ambitions as an athlete - "I hope to stand in the most fierce arena in the world and compete with the best athletes, whether these people are able-bodied or disabled."

Oscar's The road to the Olympics started five years ago. At that time, as an athlete in the T33 category (Editor's Note: Double Amputee Category), he was invincible in the men's 100m, 200m and 400m fields, and even entered the higher-level T44 category (Editor's Note: Single Leg amputation category) also easily set new world records in three events. Before the age of 20, he began participating in able-bodied track and field competitions and heading towards the Olympic Games, the highest dream of any athlete.

Oscar is not the first disabled athlete in Olympic history. There was a player in a wheelchair in the shooting competition of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; in Beijing four years ago, there was a female player on the Polish table tennis team, Pardika, with a missing forearm. Even in Oscar's home country of South Africa, he is not the first disabled athlete to participate in the Olympics. The South African swimming team once had an athlete wearing a prosthetic limb participate in the Beijing Olympics.

However, when it was Oscar's turn, everything became no longer so simple.

Sports prosthetics once became the biggest obstacle to Oscar's ability to realize his Olympic dream.

Perhaps because of his incredible speed, people once attributed Oscar's success to the pair of running prosthetics he wore called "Cheetah". In 2007, the IAAF allocated a special research fund of US$50,000 and commissioned Bruggemann, a famous professor from the University of Cologne, to study whether the "Cheetah" can help Pistorius gain more advantages than normal people. This leads to new inequities on the runway.

Professor Brueggemann used 12 high-speed cameras, 3D scanners and other scientific analysis instruments during the two-day test to provide an in-depth analysis of Oscar’s running process and his pair of shoes worth 1.5 A 10,000-pound prosthetic leg made entirely of carbon fiber and part titanium alloy. The result of the test is that regardless of the slightly forward design appearance or the use of ultra-light carbon fiber materials, the "Cheetah" can save more energy for users during sprints. According to this report, the IAAF once decided to terminate Oscar's qualification to participate in normal sprint competitions.

The Fight for the Blade

Oscar is appealing the decision in IAAF arbitration, hiring Manhattan attorney Jeffrey Kessler to represent him. Kessler is well-known in American sports circles, having represented players in the NFL and NBA in negotiating wage bargaining agreements with the leagues. With rich experience, he recruited a team of experts headed by prosthetic movement theorists such as Hugh Hull to re-evaluate the movement principles of the "Cheetah".

"Brugmann's argument is wrong in that it clearly does not understand how disabled athletes move." Hull commented. This expert in motion theory and biochemical machinery from MIT is also a fan of Oscar. He loves mountaineering and various adventure activities. He had his leg amputated due to a mountaineering accident when he was a teenager, and later devoted himself to the development of higher-tech prosthetic technology. field.

"In sprinting, the fastest runners in the world are often the ones who hit the ground the hardest, so they can get a greater reaction force. On the other hand, their feet are running The contact time with the ground is often only a tenth of a second or less. Oscar cannot do this, his cheetah is often in contact with the ground for longer, and to compensate, he must move faster than any other world-class sprinter. All players are faster, and his hip strength is stronger than others, which is like a super engine, driving a high degree of circulation in the lower limbs. "It's not so much an extra boost as it is still at a disadvantage."

"Although the use of 'Cheetah' can increase the ground feedback force from 20% of general prosthetics to close to 100%, the feedback force of ordinary people contacting the ground during exercise is still much higher than 100%, and can probably reach 250% to 300%.” Zhang is a registered prosthetic maker at the Shanghai branch of the Finnish company Ossur, the manufacturer of the “Cheetah” prosthetic limb. He explained the elasticity and feedback issues of the “Cheetah”, “With the current technology, we don’t think that In the future, the value will reach the athletic ability that human biological legs can achieve."

"In fact, most sprinters (including all Chinese Paralympic athletes) currently wear 'Cheetah' for competition." We introduced that in his opinion, the "Cheetah" is not considered high-tech equipment. "Oscar wore the 'Cheetah' to compete when he was about 16 or 17 years old. From 10 years ago to now, the design of this equipment has not experienced major improvements."

"The difference between prosthetic legs and biological legs The reason is that they have no nerves, muscles, ligaments and tendons, and cannot interact with the brain during movement. Walking with prosthetic limbs is like walking on a soft mattress. You cannot get much reaction force when you step on it, so you can’t even walk for a long time. All will be very problematic. In contrast, the 'Cheetah' uses carbon fiber material, which has good elasticity and can increase the ground reaction force when running and jumping. However, due to the appearance of the design, this product is only suitable for sprinting. Zhang explained the working principle of the "Cheetah", "In fact, the 'Cheetah' is extremely difficult to control. When you first use it, it will feel like walking on stilts and it is difficult to maintain balance."

The expert team invited by Kessler finally succeeded. He successfully lifted the IAAF's ban on Oscar with arguments that were diametrically opposed to Bruggemann's, but still made him miss the Beijing Olympics. But at the Beijing Paralympics, Oscar finally showed the world his strength with three T44 sprint gold medals.

"Honestly, putting aside the issue of prosthetics, Oscar really belongs to that kind of athlete with rare talents. His achievements in the sprint field are unparalleled, making him the only athlete who can It is unlikely that another disabled athlete will be able to achieve his level of success in the Olympics," said Professor of Movement Theory and Biomechanics at Southern Methodist Union in Dallas. Peter Wayand concluded this for us.

"Put your legs on"

"I have never felt that I am any different from other people. This may have something to do with my family education. Since I was a child, my mother has treated everyone at home Every child is treated equally." Oscar recalled to reporters that every morning when he went to school, his mother, a school counselor, would point at his brother Carl and say, put on your shoes, and then turn back to him and say, "And. You, put on your "legs".

Oscar, 26, was born in South Africa and is the second oldest child in his family. He once told a visiting New York Times reporter that his family was very ordinary and his parents were not very wealthy. But in general, the Pistorius family can be considered a prominent family in South Africa. Their ancestors came from Switzerland and immigrated to South Africa five generations ago. Many branches of the family later became an extremely wealthy group in South Africa.

"If it is a misfortune to be born with a disability, then fortunately, in such a country with a huge gap between rich and poor, he was at least born on the right side - if it were the opposite, it would be difficult to imagine this What will be the future of the children?" a reporter from the New York Times later commented.

Since he was born without fibula and ankle bones, Oscar had to have his body amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old out of the need for body protection. He began to learn to walk with prosthetics at 17 months old. Although he has never tried to walk on his legs, he is still an energetic boy. He practiced rugby, water polo, boxing and tennis since he was a child. He also climbed trees with his brother Carl and participated in motorcycle races. If anyone dared to laugh at his prosthetic legs, he would be kicked to the ground by him.

Jamie Brooks was Oscar’s boxing coach in high school. He recalled the process of their acquaintance: “He came over with other kids and wanted to train. I didn’t train until six months later. Realizing that he had no lower limbs."

Oscar started practicing track and field at the age of 16, "but at that time I didn't even know what the Paralympics was," he recalled. At the age of 17, after wearing the famous "Cheetah" sports prosthesis, he conquered various competitions and world records at a whirlwind speed on the track. He turned into a professional athlete in 2004, and in just three weeks he broke the 200-meter world record in the T33 (double leg amputation) and T44 (single leg amputation) levels. Two months later, he He ran 11.51 seconds in the 100 meters, far behind the original 100-meter world record for people with disabilities of 12.20 seconds. "A five-speed engine without a second gear," his coach described him.

After Athens in 2004, the engine continued to blow up the Bird's Nest at the Beijing Paralympic Games, where the double-amputee won three Olympic gold medals in the men's 100m, 200m and 400m in the T44 category. In Beijing, he is the other sports star who is most pestered by the media after Phelps and Usain Bolt.

Compared to the boy with blond curly hair and blue eyes 4 years ago, who would blush even if he was hugged by a fan, Oscar no longer looks shy and his face has begun to change. It is rough and severe, which is partly due to the accident in 2008. That time, a speedboat he was driving crashed into a pier south of the Johannesburg River. His face and body hit the steering wheel. Two ribs, jaw and eye sockets were injured. Doctors had to sew 172 stitches on his face.

"That accident had a great impact on me. It made me rethink my life and sports life." Having said this, he does not seem to have stopped pursuing speed and adventure. Earlier this year, he was riding a mountain bike across a pasture and tripped over a fence pole. When he got up, he found that his prosthetic leg was hanging on a high wire fence and swinging in the wind. "Fortunately, it was not a real leg, so the prosthetic leg was still there." There are advantages." He said half-jokingly.

"This is his nature, there is really no way." His agent, Peter Van Zyl, could only comment like this.

In addition to exciting speed racing activities, many of Oscar’s hobbies are related to his poor sleep quality. Because he couldn't sleep well, he would often walk around New York alone in the middle of the night. He would go from his home to a Puerto Rican tattoo shop in SOHO to get a tattoo for himself; he would practice shooting all night at a shooting range not far from home. "That calmed me down." A way." He told reporters. In addition, cooking and reading can also produce the same effect. His reading interests are wide ranging, from the Madoff scandal to rugby and racing, but the most are biographical books, such as Mandela and Dylan. , David Beckham, Salvador Dali and Steve Jobs.

B="The Bund Illustrated"

P= Oscar Pistorius

B: When did you know that you could Competing in the men's 400m and 4x400m at the London Olympics? We know you have been longing for this moment for a long time. What was your first reaction when everything actually happened?

P: In addition to feeling excited, of course I am also very honored. I feel that this is a reward for my hard training and determination over the years. When this moment actually happened, I felt that all the hard work was worth it. It's a pity that I have been preparing for the Olympics and the subsequent Paralympic Games. I actually don't have time to celebrate this rare opportunity. Now I just hope to achieve good results in the competition and save it for after the Olympics. Let’s all celebrate together.

B: You won three gold medals at the Beijing Paralympic Games. I heard at the time that you were actually very nervous and asked your family not to come to watch the games.

Is it the same this time in London?

P: I am a very focused athlete, especially during competitions. I am more accustomed to having my own time to devote myself to competition preparations. A space free from distractions is very important to me. But this time the situation is a bit special, so my family came to London to support me, which made me very happy.

B: How do you relieve stress before a competition?

P: My sleep quality is not very good, and I often find it difficult to relax. However, recently I have found that simply watching a movie at home or cooking delicious food can help me relax and reduce stress. In addition to running, I am also fascinated by many other sports and participate in many sports myself, such as shooting. However, lately they have been put aside as I need to devote 100% of my energy to preparing for the Olympics and Paralympics.

B: Since you have to participate in both the Olympics and the Paralympics this time, will you make any adjustments in training?

P: In addition to participating in the Olympic Games, my plan this time is to also defend my three-time championship status in the Paralympic Games. I know this will be a big undertaking. Challenge, for which I have to do a series of intensive training before. However, as far as the training content is concerned, it is not very different from usual. I usually train six days a week, twice a day, on the track and in the gym. Of course, in addition, since the Olympic Games is the highest level competition in the world, athletes must be adequately prepared not only physically but also mentally.

B: You said before that in order to achieve the Olympic A standard and compete in London, you trained hard and sacrificed a lot in your personal life. Can you give some examples?

P: In addition to undergoing unprecedented intensive training, the biggest sacrifice may be that many hobbies have to be temporarily put aside, such as motorcycle racing, which is very exciting but a bit dangerous. You won’t be able to participate again until after the Olympics. But I think it is worth it. The Olympics is now the most important thing in my life. I believe there will be many opportunities to do other things in the future.

B: Do you think your athletic talent is hereditary?

P: Rather than showing off my athletic talent, I was very naughty when I was a child, but I think children all like to play. I loved sports, cars and dreamed of playing rugby. I also have a special interest in architecture. I think if I had not become an athlete, I would have pursued a career related to architecture.

B: You are 25 years old this year, which should be considered the golden age of your athlete career. Where do you think your limit is?

P: I feel like we never know where our true limits are. That’s why I chose to work with Oakley. I love their manifesto “Beyond Reason,” which challenges and transcends one’s limits. I set higher demands on myself every day. After a period of time, the sweat and hard work you put in will be rewarded with results that make you happy. If I don’t get injured and stick to this mentality and training, I think I can last until 2016. I think I will reach the peak of my athletic status by then. We'll see!

B: Among the historical and current athletes in the 100m, 200m and 400m, if you could choose freely, who would you most like to play against?

P: Well, if I can only choose one, I'm really not sure. I have some lists, such as Frank Fredricks and Colin Jackson. Man, I'm not sure I can keep up with them because these guys are so fast.

B: So what about Bolt?

P: Of course I hope to play against him. Bolt is a very good sprinter, I respect him and I would love to beat him if given the chance. Who knows, anything can happen on the track.

B: You are also an idol to many people now. Regarding your own story, what part of your story do you most hope to inspire others?

P: Even if you are physically disabled, as long as you have enough confidence, you are still capable of accomplishing everything you dream of.