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Leeper’s preferred running legs made him nearly 6 feet 6 inches tall when competing. He stood out as the next great blade runner in 2018, running the 400 meters in 44.42 seconds. Time could have earned him a spot on the 2016 United States Olympic team.
However, he should have competed at around 6 feet tall, according to the methods that World Athletics came to rely on to track this performance – as determined by the International Paralympic Committee. When Leeper landed in Weyand’s lab for evaluation, he was seeking approval to compete in legs that made him about 6 feet. World Athletics does not compromise.
The advantage, Weyand explains, is the longer Leeper can make his legs, the more space his J-shaped “feet” can take up when in contact with the ground. He noted that other runners did not have the option to stretch their limbs to gain speed.
Weyand and his team calculated that Leeper would sacrifice one-tenth of a meter per second for every centimeter lost in height. When they tested it, that’s exactly what happened. In a series of decisions over the next two months, Leeper’s efforts to compete for a place at the Olympics were rejected.
Yet even Weyand acknowledged that science has its limits; This made Coe’s efforts to find a balance between inclusivity and competitive justice so strained.
Weyand said the advantages of a mechanical leg in the lab are much easier to predict and measure than hormone levels. Understanding why and how much a naturally elevated testosterone level helps a female runner at 100, 200 or 10,000 meters is a different challenge.
“These problems are much more difficult,” Weyand said.
Coe knows this and has received a lot of criticism, but the uncompetitive stars are not backing down no matter how big they are.
“I don’t pretend the world is a fair place,” he said.
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