The 2008 Paralympics wrapped up over the summer, but we’re only just today learning about some of the awesome stories to come out of this amazing tech-assisted sporting event. We’ve covered these bionic athletes before, with some help from the Big Picture, but today’s story out of Germany shows just how much goes into helping these young men and women compete. A previous sporting injury left Wojtek Czyz without a left leg and the ability to long jump. The ESA, using materials developed for space, helped him get to the Olympics and vault into the record books.
Tech and the Olympics are a recipe for controversy. Before double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius (right) was finally approved to compete in the Olympics (he failed to qualify, barely), naysayers claimed his carbon-fibre Cheetah blade prostheses gave him an advantage over non-cyborg competitors. And Speedo’s LZR suit has been decried for rendering meaningless any world records that came before. But that debate is dropped entirely for the Paralympic Games, which are currently going on in Beijing and as we see in today’s Big Picture, is where the sports tech comes out in force.
