First of all, you have to admire Oscar Pistorius. The South African track star is dedicated, persistent, hard working, courageous and adaptable. Maybe that’s just the kind of guy he is. Maybe it’s his handicap that has made him tough.
Oscar “Bladerunner” Pistorius
Oscar Pistorius has no legs. He’s a double amputee from the age of 11 months. But he’ll be representing South Africa in the upcoming London Olympics in the 400 meter run. He’s got these weird artificial legs with some kind of springy thingies that looks like skis instead of feet.
I’ll be watching. Usually, I find the running events to be uninteresting, but this year will actually be historical. I’ll be rooting for him to win, too, but it’s not because I’m such a great sports fan. This is the most interesting man v. machine contest since John Henry took on the steam hammer.
To technuts, it is the beginning of a new age, to sports purists we are at the start of a slippery slope. It’s not too hard to see where it goes from here.
2012 Olympics Oscar Pistorius competes. Doesn’t get any medals, really only qualified on a technicality.
2016 Patrick “Pogolegs” Peterson takes gold for Canada in the high hurdles, low hurdles, long jump and triple jump, shattering world records in all of them.
2018 Winter Olympics, Swedish biathlete Magnus Magnusson wins gold, but is disqualified when it is revealed that his bionic eyes have been computer enhanced to be virtual rifle sights.
2019 Robot boxers are banned from competing with humans, after a string of fatalities.
2020 First driverless Grand Prix takes place in Sydney. Crowds of enthusiastic fans fail to notice any difference. There are no accidents, however, and everybody goes home vaguely disappointed.
from 2020 or so More and more young athletes are voluntarily trading in their natural body parts for new arms, legs, lungs and even hearts. Steroid use, however, drops.
2024 Olympics Bionic athletes win everything, by huge margins. Olympic committee votes in new rule, that all competing athletes must be at least 50% human, by weight.
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