Science of Sport awards: Sports science story of the year

Sports science story of the year: Looking into the brain

Looking back on 2011, but through an academic lens, leaves the impossible task of trying to pick a research highlight.  I guess in much the same way as your choice of a Sports Star of the Year would be influenced by your choice of sport (Messi, Djokovic, Cavendish or Wellington), the choice of most exciting or impactful sports science story of the year is heavily influenced by your particular focus within the sciences.

Similarly, within sports science, you may be heavily invested in physical activity and disease, molecular basis for injuries, applied physiology, or performance physiology.

My personal focus, at least during my PhD was fatigue, and specifically the role of the brain in the regulation of performance and pacing strategy.  Therefore, my pick as the sports science story of 2011 is a series of studies out of Switzerland, which have provided the first evidence of how brain structures interact with one another during fatiguing exercise. To quote from the third of the three studies:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically demonstrate that muscle fatigue leads to changes in interaction between structures of a brain's neural network

Background - the brain was clearly involved, but the "how" was missing

As I was finishing my PhD, the problem I encountered is that we were able to observe how performance and specifically pacing strategy was affected by various interventions (heat, high or low oxygen, energy supply, deception or manipulation of distance information), but we didn't have the tools to measure the neural processes that were producing these changes.


Briefly, it was pretty clear that exercise performance was regulated by the brain, and over time, the theory evolved that the brain was monitoring all the physiological systems and ensuring that performance was optimized in the face of potentially limiting (or even harmful) changes in homeostasis.  For example, it had been shown pretty clearly that when we hit a body temperature of around 40 degrees celsius, we stopped - limiting fatigue due to hyperthermia.  Therefore, as soon as exercise was self-paced, the brain would monitor the rate at which the temperature was rising, and then regulate exercise intensity in order to prevent us from hitting this "limit" before the known end of exercise.

The same was true for exercise at altitude, with low glycogen stores, and when you lied to athletes about how much exercise remained - there was an anticipatory component to fatigue, so that fatigue was not merely the failure of physiology, but the process by which that potential failure (in performance, in this case), might be regulated.

The problem is that our ability to measure the neural contributions was limited.  We were able to measure muscle activation levels, albeit crudely during dynamic exercise, but it gave a pretty clear picture of how the degree of muscle recruitment was altered by the brain over the course of exercise and with different situations.  However, much had to be inferred from how power output or running speed changed as a function of changes in various physiological systems.

Therefore, at the conclusion of my PhD back in 2006, we had a theory, sometimes called the "central governor" model, which I believe accurately explained what was observed during exercise, but was in need of a mechanistic component.  The theory began to evolve into the realms of philosophy (sometimes deliberate, other times out of ignorance).  And one of the problems was this lent itself to gross misunderstandings.  A very respected scientist came to me in Denver this year and mocked the theory because it meant there must "be a little man dancing around in your head telling you how to exercise".

Of course, that is not part of any theory I've ever seen, but in the absence of measurements of brain function during exercise, it is, I suppose, the inevitable criticism.  This lack of mechanistic explanation is one of the primary reasons that I looked elsewhere for future research, because we had taken our observations to a point where we had a model, a theory for how fatigue and physiology were inter-related, how pacing and performance were regulated, but we could not move beyond the hypothetical.

And so when, only a few months ago, a series of three studies on fatigue and the brain were published, it was an exciting breakthrough, the first, I suspect, of many, which will push the field of fatigue and exercise into the next phase of understanding.

The three studies: Building the model of fatigue

Science Daily have a really concise summary of the three studies, including some quotes from the scientists involved.  I won't rehash the translation of the science here, but rather direct you to their summary.

For those interested in the papers discussed in that article, they are at the followings links:

1. Afferent pain information from the muscle contributes to inhibition of the motor cortex during fatiguing muscle contractions
2. The thalamus and insular cortex are involved in regulating exercise in response to afferent information from the muscle
3. Communication between brain areas during fatigue exercise

The studies are certainly a breakthrough, but by no means a complete picture.  For example, the first of the three studies produces a similar finding to a body of work by Markus Ammann (not in 2011, but over the last 4 or 5 years), which have shown a similar role of afferent (feedback) information from the muscle to the brain.  The motor output (think muscle activation) is clearly influenced by this information, which should be obvious as soon as one accept that fatigue, and therefore performance, are regulated in the same way that any system is (blood glucose, body temperature etc - there are sensors, there is feedback, there is an effector).

What is needed next is to move this technology on from isolated muscle contractions and onto dynamic exercise.  The above studies all used pretty isolated exercise (handgrips or leg extensions), or they use EEG during cycling (in Study 3).  When we can measure brain activity using fMRI in different regions of the brain during a 10km running time-trial, for example, then we will have some extremely powerful information.

That breakthrough may be coming - at my University, some colleagues have done some great work and are in fairly advanced stages of being able to measure brain activity using fMRI during cycling activity, and that should unlock more secrets - the video is below.



Next step - decoding the "lights" and making sense of data

Once this can be done, then it's a matter of understanding what it all means.  The field of neuroscience has long ago evolved from a "black box" approach to understanding brain function, towards an integrated model.  The danger for sports science is that the same may happen.  Indeed, it already exists - this mindset has been another source of criticism for the central governor, in that people seem to expect it to be a distinct anatomical structure.  Even the approach to studying fatigue has probably been held back by too specific approach to what is clearly a multi-faceted, complex phenomenon.

The reality is that it's far too complex for that, and only many years of research will build the picture of how the brain integrates such vast complexity to regulate performance in the obvious way that it does!

2011 may have provided the first steps, but they are the first of many!

Ross

Next time:  Sports stars of the year

Science of Sport Awards: More controversies

Controversies of 2011: Honorable mentions

Having earlier awarded "Controversy of the Year" to the Oscar Pistorius story, here are some other noteworthy controversies that affected sport in 2011.  

Caster Semenya - back on the stage

Caster Semenya was undoubtedly the big controversy of 2009, when she won the 800m world title amid speculation and tests about her gender.  2010 was a quiet year because the IAAF and various legal teams were ironing out the details of the treatment of whatever medical condition was present before Semenya could return to the sport.  That return happened in 2011, and Semenya once again became a big story at the World Championships.  

Having enjoyed a patchy season in 2011, where one very solid performance was followed by a poor showing, Semenya was always going to be an "all or nothing" performer in Daegu.  It turned out to be "all", at least in terms of the time she was able to produce.   More controversial was the manner of her racing - she looked unbelievably easy and relaxed, even when finishing fifth or sixth, and many speculated that she was losing on purpose to avoid the attention given to the winner.  That mistrust stems directly from the lack of transparency around the whole affair - having announced (unwittingly) to the world that there were problems, nobody took the initiative to inform athletics how those problems were resolved.  So Semenya was destined through that silence to be doubted and mistrusted, and that happened every time she raced, regardless of the outcome.

In Daegu, through the heats and semi-final, she looked dominant, and there was an ominous feeling among athletics followers going into the final.  There, the pace was quick - a 55.86s first lap, with Semenya in fifth and Marina Savinova on her shoulder in 6th.  600m was reached in 1:26:07, and a time matching the 1:55.45 that Semenya produced in Berlin in 2009 was on the cards.  As was the win - Semenya moved to the front with the same effortless style she had produced in 2009 and in some of her European races this year.  But Savinova held on, and the gap didn't grow as it had in Berlin, and with 50m to go, the Russian moved onto Semenya's shoulder and took gold in 1:55.87.  Semenya came in second in 1:56.35, just under a second slower than the winning time in Berlin, but with much stiffer competition, two years of maturity and more experience. 

I am reliably informed that the moment that Savinova took the lead from Semenya with 50m to go, there were loud cheers in the press box in Daegu, further proof of just how negatively the athlete is viewed by the media.  That is partly situational, but hasn't been helped by some extraordinary stupidity by her management team, who at one point in 2011 announced that any media who wished to interview her would have to pay for that privilege.  This, along with sponsor requests, complaints about money and a general veil of secrecy make Semenya one of the most controversial athletes in the world.

Pointedly, in the aftermath of her World Championship silver, Semenya smiled, spoke openly to the media and showed a side of herself that hadn't been seen, but probably should be seen more often.  She could be an incredibly media-friendly personality and it would be a good antidote to the negative perceptions that currently exist.  It will never remove them, of course, but it's a step in the right direction.  2012 will tell whether she embraces her status or continues, through her management, to play the villain.   She recently split with her coach, and has now teamed up with Maria Mutola, which gives another dimension to the story.  

As for what happened in the 18 months between Berlin and Daegu, we are none the wiser.  I am still firmly of the belief that chemical treatment was enforced to lower testosterone levels, though I have no idea how this is being monitored, or even if it is.  As long as that ignorance remains, Semenya's races, regardless of result, will always be accompanied by claims that she "lost on purpose", "threw the race", or wasn't trying hard enough.  I'd suggest that going to the front of the World Championship final with 200m to run, and then losing in the last 50m is MORE attention grabbing that staying in fourth or third the whole way, but the rumor mill will circulate.  Watch this space in 2012.

Read the report after Semenya's silver in the Daegu 800m final

Cycling and anti-doping

This is always controversial.  2011 started well enough, with three CAS cases being won before April, the first time that the biological passport had been tested in court.  It stood up to the test, a good sign for its future legal credibility.  However, it came at a cost - literally.  The financial burden of having to defend the bans handed down on the basis of the biological passport proved, over the remainder of 2011, to be a huge impediment to the effective implementation of the passport concept.

In August, Gerard Vroomen, co-founder of the Cervelo team, raised questions about the testing being done as part of the passport system.  He wrote:

“I have not heard of a rider being tested for the biological passport between the end of the 2010 Tour and April 2011. After that I am not sure,” he stated. “While it is logical that the frequency of testing might decrease somewhat once profiles are established, the fact remains that the profile in itself is not a deterrent. The deterrent comes from testing current values against those profiles to see if there are clues indicating doping.

And of course, he is quite right.  We posted on this a few times in 2011, most recently when I presented at the UKSEM conference, and presented some of the data showing how doping behavior was changed as a result of the biological passport (it's in the presentation at the link).  However, without the testing, any rational cyclist (who is willing to dope) will change behavior back and resume doping.

The UCI of course reacted to this, making public their stats that 1,577 tests had been conducted during the period in question.   However, Prof Michael Ashenden, one of the leading experts in the fight against doping, also contributed his opinion that "It’s correct that the observation made by Gerard Vroomen matches with my experience. I have noticed a significant gap between tests in some of the profiles I have reviewed. It’s definitely not in every single profile, but enough to have left an impression on me.”

The UCI is certainly not an organization one would call fully transparent.  Or trustworthy (both reputations have been "earned")  And so their statement and statistics were met with more than a hint of skepticism, most commentators jumping not on the actual number, but the fact that it may represent a significant decrease in testing compared to previous years, and certainly to the vision of the passport system.  It was even labelled a "PR exercise".

And make no mistake, the biological passport is expensive.  What may push it over the edge, however, is the legal struggle that inevitably surrounds the cases it brings to light.  The cost of defending the finding may ultimately cripple the entire system.  Even the testing process is expensive, and the result is that the sport may have itself an effective tool that is extremely inefficient.  Contrast this to the idea that a urine test could catch dopers by detecting banned substances in the urine, which was theoretically efficient but utterly ineffective, and you appreciate that if the sport is to stay on top of the doping problem, it needs a whole lot more money.  And a whole lot more transparency.

The false-start rule, courtesy Usain Bolt

You may remember a time when every athlete in a sprint race was allowed a false start.  The result was that you could, in theory, have nine false starts before the first athlete was disqualified.  That made for drawn out races, it affected TV times and it allowed gamesmanship, and so the rule was changed, first to allow one false start for the race in 2003 (the second one, regardless of who it was, was out), and then to disqualify athletes immediately when false-starting.

This rule took effect in 2010, and many wondered how long it would take to claim its first high-profile 'victim'.  In the end, that person could not have been more high-profile - on Sunday August 28th, Usain Bolt went into his blocks for the final of the men's 100m in the IAAF World Championships, and then jumped the gun.

For Bolt to be the victim of a rule that people had warned against fueled a big debate, the "told-you-so" camp against the "those are the rules" camp.  It's a sad situation for those in the stadium who had paid big money to see the world's most recognizable athlete (and indeed, sportsman, so influential is Bolt), and so the analogy that was made at the time is that disqualifying an athlete for a 'mistake' is the same as sending Lionel Messi off in the 2nd minute of a Champions League final for an innocuous foul.

The difference, I suppose, is that a false-start is not an innocuous foul.  It's paramount to the result of the race, and entirely controllable by the athlete.  There is, of course, an issue with the starter, who oftens holds athletes at "get set" and causes the false start, so that's an issue that needs to be controlled by the IAAF.

However, generally, if the rule exists, and the athlete knows it, one can't make exceptions after the fact.  It's an impossible situation for the sport to deal with, because if one false start is allowed as an allowance of "human error", then the second error is punished disproportionately harshly.   Also, allowing one false start gives one athlete the opportunity to play games with the other seven by deliberately jumping the gun. It's also not quite the same as swimming, because the start carries relatively greater importance (the race is shorter and acceleration is faster).

So in the end, it's a rule that won't change.  Bolt was at fault, not the rule, and London 2012 will reveal if he's learned a lesson.  Incidentally, Bolt is not new to false starts in major races.  He jumped in 2009 as well, but because they had the one false start rule then, he got a reprieve and went on to run 9.58s.  So for the world's fastest man, the challenge is to control his desire to match his rivals out the blocks, and that alone will make London interesting.

Then, just as an aside, the plot thickened in the aftermath of Bolt's disqualification.  HD video of the incident showed that Yohan Blake twitched in the lane immediately adjacent to Bolt.  That twitch, theoretically, could constitute a false start, and could also be viewed as the trigger for Bolt's false start.  If that was the case, then it should have been Blake, and not Bolt, who was disqualified.  If you believe that Bolt's false start was entirely unrelated to Blake's twitch, then they could be viewed as unrelated events, and both might have been disqualified.  Or the third option, and the one which proved to be borne out by the start data, is that Blake's twitch, while clear on TV slow-motion replays, was not large enough to trigger the equipment, and therefore can't be called a twitch in the first place.

I guess it raises questions of what threshold the equipment should have, whether it should be trusted more than the eye of the starter and officials.  Ultimately, that's an academic debate.

Rugby's referee debacle

The Rugby World Cup produced South Africa's big controversy of 2011 when Bryce Lawrence was blamed for our team's quarter-final defeat against Australia.  Lawrence, from New Zealand, was accused of being incompetent at best, corrupt at worst, part of a plot to ensure that the South African team did not derail New Zealand's chances of winning the tournament on home soil.

The accusations of corruption came from influential sources, but lacked evidence, fueled largely by emotion.  Admittedly, Lawrence was absolutely terrible in that match, but unfortunately the South African "disease" of blaming everyone but themselves meant that we failed to take the lessons out of the match, adapt to the referee and win it anyway.  Which we should have done.   In short, Lawrence's failures on the day were simply incompetence, or perhaps instruction, in that he clearly erred on the side of the team without the ball, perhaps under orders to allow a free-flowing match.  He allowed far too much to happen in the rucks and the result was that the team defending was given the advantage.  The problem for South Africa is that this team was Australia, who barely had the ball as an attacking force.  The end result is that he appeared biased because he was advantaging the team without the ball.  Fixed?  No.  Incompetent?  Yes.

And this introduced the larger problem faced by rugby.  I wrote a post on this in October, describing how the sport has a credibility problem, because too much is left open to interpretation and therefore post-match criticism of the referee.  The IRB hasn't managed to control the standard or the interpretation of admittedly challenging rules, and so every result is questioned by angry and emotional fans (and sometimes coaches).  This is equally true in Sevens, where I'm involved with the SA Sevens team, and where the IRB just cannot seem to take seriously enough the development of its own referees.  The end result is farcical officiating, which unfortunately exerts too great an influence on the outcome of matches.

Match-fixing in cricket

Cricket is a sport that has been dogged by match-fixing for over a decade.  It was a South African who was the main protagonist when the problem was first thrust into the global limelight, when Hansie Cronje was tried and found guilty of match-fixing.  The problem had of course existed long before he fell prey to it, and 2011 showed that it is still very much alive. Three Pakistani cricketers, Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif were jailed in November for their part in a 2010 match-fixing conspiracy in London.

Specifically, it was a "spot-fixing" scandal, where betters can place a very specific bet within the context of the match (things like who bowls which over, whether a batsmen will score above or below a certain target, number of boundaries etc).  In this case, the bet was that Aamer, Pakistan's fast bowler, would deliver a no-ball on the first ball of the third over, and another on the sixth delivery of the tenth over, this time by Mohammed Asif.  Sure enough, both were (massive) no balls, and when a video came to light by News of the World showing the player's agent making these predictions, the plot was exposed.  Picking exactly which ball out of 540 in a day of cricket would be a no-ball may seem a ridiculous bet to make, but that's the nature of cricket, and it's why the game lends itself so easily to corruption like this.

Add to this the fact that the money in the game in India is absolutely enormous, and cricket is ripe for corruption.  The governing body for the sport, the ICC, has an anti-corruption unit which has made some impact, but when you consider how easily aspects of cricket can be fixed, it is an impossible battle to win.

Soccer's racism controversy - the extreme manifestation of a deeper problem

A final one, and really just a brief opinion, on the most recent controversy affecting sport, that of racism in football.  Luis Suarez of Liverpool received an 8-match ban for making racist comments to Patrice Evra of Manchester United, and John Terry, Chelsea's England international, faces criminal charges for his accused racist comments towards Anton Ferdinand.

There has been a real uproar about this in the media, not surprisingly.  It was discussed recently on radio in South Africa and got me thinking about the root cause of the problem.  That root cause, I believe, is not racism, but just the plain lack of respect that football seems to facilitate between players.   Racism is the manifestation or application of the problem, it's not the problem in an of itself.

Don't get me wrong - racism is clearly a problem, there's no doubt about it.  But it's one of the extreme expressions of the same thing along a continuum, and if the sport is serious about stamping out the extreme, it has to act on the less severe cases as well.

I have seen footage of Suarez and Evra's exchange, the argument that got Suarez the 8-match ban.  It's disgraceful, and it doesn't matter what he actually said.  Whether he was making racist comments, or attacking Evra's hairstyle, language, family, football ability, should not change the fact that the two of them were clearly way beyond a line of respect and decency and deserve bans.  Proving who started it, or who is more to blame is a trickier proposition, of course, but the point is that the two of them should both be sanctioned for their behavior towards one another.

That there is a racist undertone to it simply shows that it progressed far enough along that extreme that Suarez brought out more personal insults.  Suarez, for his part, has shown his character repeatedly since he became infamous in 2010 for his hand ball against Ghana and subsequent celebrations, and sadly, his character is not condemned nearly enough in football.  Nor is the lack of quality displayed by many footballers, who seem celebrated rather than condemned for what is actually just disgraceful behavior.

For example, when Jose Mourinho flicked Barcelona's assistant on the ear earlier this year, he should have been given a ban of 10 or more matches.  No debate, instant ban.  And when Pinto, the Barcelona reserve goalkeeper, got involved in a skirmish, it should have produced six matches.  Every player who storms a referee screaming for a decision should get a two match ban.  Swearing should be an automatic one match, at the report of the referee.  Football needs to be cleaned up, and focusing on the far extreme behavior and getting worked up over racism is a waste of energy, in my opinion, when the problem exists at the far left, where a basic disrespect for people is facilitated by the "beautiful game".

Football fans will no doubt unite and say it isn't so, but the fact is, football is tarnished by the behavior of its players, and it condones this behavior with inaction.  We shouldn't be debating whether Suarez is a racist or not, we should simply say that he deserves 8 matches for behavior that is undesirable and doesn't belong in the sport.

And I don't want the sport to be sanitized to the point where there is no 'sledging', no hostility.  Players in high pressure situations should express themselves, the sport needs the antagonism.  But a line needs to be drawn and defended.  Football currently has no such line, and then we are surprised that players might be racist?

Ross


And in breaking news, Suarez gets an unrelated 1-match ban for a gesture made to opposition fans.  It should be six more matchs, but proves the point...

Next time:  Sports Science stories of 2011!

Science of Sport Awards: Controversy of the year, Oscar Pistorius

2011 Awards: Controversy of the year - Pistorius, go-karts and Formula 1 machines

Controversy is never far from sport, and therefore the science of sport.  Many of the controversies in recent years have been directly related to science - think Caster Semenya in 2009, doping in sport (every year), swimsuits and performance in 2008.

2011 didn't produce a "new" controversy, but rather reruns of the same dramas we've discussed before.  However, one of those was comfortably, for this site anyway, the most relevant and debated story in sports science, and it was the case of Oscar Pistorius, the Controversy of 2011.

Pistorius - the scientific evidence and the PR machine

So much has been written on this topic that I won't devote an entire post to explaining the science...again.  I am sure every one of you knows the story - a South African double-amputee, bursts onto the scene in 2004, declares an intention to run in the Olympic Games in 2007, then goes through two rounds of scientific testing to confirm his claims that the high-tech carbon fiber blades that he runs with (called Cheetahs) do not give him a performance advantage.  

Those two rounds of testing are done first at the request of the IAAF in Germany, and then in Texas as part of Pistorius' appeal against the ban issued based on the results from the Germany tests.  

But what did the tests show?  Somewhere along the journey, the science is hijacked by a massive PR machine that has followed Pistorius since 2007, and which applies pressure to the IAAF to permit his participation, and then ultimately on the process by which the Court of Arbitration ultimately declared that there was insufficient evidence to ban Pistorius.

2011 then was not the year that the Pistorius question was first asked.  Rather, it was the year that it became relevant, for Pistorius qualified for the IAAF World Championships and raced in Daegu in August.  That created a firestorm of media coverage, and the resultant question was asked.  The same will likely be true in 2012, and so this is an issue that will almost certainly be revisited then.

But these are the crucial facts, most of which have been overlooked by the media, or obscured by lies and PR tactics.

The scientific explanation - back to theory, proven by tests

The two rounds of testing revealed fairly conclusively that Pistorius did not "run" in the manner that able-bodied runners do.  Mechanically, it was a totally different locomotion, which Peter Bruggemann, the German biomechanist who did the German testing, described as a "bouncing locomotion at a lower metabolic cost".

The "metabolic cost" statement was important, and was made based on tests that showed that Pistorius used 25% less oxygen during 400m sprinting than able-bodied runners.  That by itself is not a performance advantage, but it is very important when you keep in mind the entire scientific process.  That process must begin with a question and scientific rationale.  That question is "Does Pistorius enjoy a performance advantage?" and the rationale is:

• More energy return from carbon fiber than human tendon means that metabolic cost would be reduced.  That's important because the ability to run at a given pace for 400m is limited by metabolic changes in the muscle.  These can't be measured directly, but metabolic cost is a proxy for them
• Lighter mass of carbon fiber limbs means lower cost of accelerating the limbs, allowing quicker limb movement and therefore sprinting
• Carbon fiber does not fatigue, whereas muscle/tendon is known to be significantly affected by the end of a 400m race

So the metabolic finding by Bruggemann confirmed the first 2 points above.  Directly, using less oxygen has little bearing on sprint performance, but it does point to confirmation of energy return, metabolic and performance advantages. On the note of the energy return, Bruggemann measured energy loss in the human tendon at 41%, compared to only 8% for the carbon fiber blade, so the picture came together pretty clearly.  Hence the ban.  You can read more about the German-testing at this detailed piece I wrote in August

However, there were problems with the research, particularly the measurement of oxygen during sprinting.  There's no doubt the conclusion was made too broadly based on the tests, a mistake that would prove costly in the scientific "debate" at CAS, because it gave Pistorius a fairly easy means to refute the finding.  

That is, Pistorius was able to appeal the decision and perform his own tests, and his team designed a test that would measure oxygen use during slower, low-intensity running.  

Those tests again showed that Pistorius used less oxygen than able-bodied runners, even when running slowly (17% lower, to be precise).  However, by "creatively" adding in data from world class distance runners measured over a period of ten years, the researchers were able to manipulate the data sufficiently to show that he was not statistically different from other runners.  The fact that these runners were not sprinters, but marathon runners, seemed not to matter to either the scientists, or CAS, or the media who have covered the story.  

It's an extra-ordinary comparison to make, particularly when you consider that data do exist for other sprinters.  And most tellingly, when you compare Pistorius to these other sprinters, then suddenly you get a picture that shows that he is 14% and 2.3 SD more economical.  That's a big difference, and had they included those comparisons, as they should have, then the conclusion of the "scientific" paper would have been totally different - it would have had to conclude that Pistorius is metabolically and mechanically different from able-bodied runners, and these differences are consistent with a performance advantage.

You can read about this research, and how the data were compared selectively for the CAS in this detailed post.

The "missing evidence" - never presented at CAS

Then the story got even more remarkable.  Having cleared Pistorius to compete, a research article was published by a team of six scientists.  This is the research described above, where Pistorius was found to be metabolically similar to distance runners.  This is the foundation of the data presented to the CAS.

But 18 months later, an extra-ordinary announcement followed.  It was made by Peter Weyand and Matthew Bundle, TWO of the group of six scientists in the Pistorius research team.  They came out in November 2009 with the statement that "Pistorius enjoys a large advantage", and that "we knew it all along".

This remarkable statement was followed by a point-counterpoint debate in the Journal of Applied Physiology, which revealed a split among those six scientists.  It transpired that on the very first day of testing, Weyand (the world's leading authority on sprint mechanics) and Bundle noted that Pistorius' mechanics were "off the charts".  Specifically, his lighter carbon fiber prosthetic blades enabled him to accelerate his limbs so rapidly that he could do what no other runner could in terms of repositioning his limbs.  

Weyand had previously established that a limit to sprinting, regardless of speed, was the ability to reposition the limbs, and Pistorius "broke" the limit considerably.  That led Weyand to recognize the performance advantage.  Weyand and Bundle describe this in their own words: 

"Reduced limb repositioning times allow Mr. Pistorius to spend less time in the air between steps.  Shorter aerial periods, in turn, substantially reduce how hard Mr. Pistorius must hit the ground during each stance period to lift and move his body forward into the next step.

In this sense, the level of sprinting athleticism required for Mr. Pistorius to achieve world class speeds is dramatically reduced compared to his intact limb competitors.  Mr. Pistorius attains world-class sprinting speeds with the ground forces and foot-ground contact times of a slow and relatively uncompetitive runner.  Mr. Pistorius’ intact-limb competitors, with natural limb weights and swing times, lack this option, and therefore must achieve their speeds via exclusively biological means.  Mr. Pistorius, in contrast, achieves these speeds through the use of technology"

You can read more about this discovery and the basis for the 12-second advantage they calculated (an overestimate in my opinion) in the detailed article on this site written in August.

Weyand and Bundle speak

The above statements come from a piece that was written by Weyand and Bundle in response to articles I wrote on this site in August.  They contacted me to request a one-time post on The Science of Sport, and I was very happy to oblige.  However, for various reasons, the posts didn't happen here, but they were published on the SMU website.  I would highly encourage you to read them - they are lucid, to the point, and they clear up many of the misconceptions that you'd have read in the popular media as a result of lies told by Pistorius, Hugh Herr and co.

• Part 1: Clarifications of the history of the case
• Part 2: The science of Oscar Pistorius' advantage

The CAS hearing: Evidence not presented, the cover-up of omission

I got the distinct impression that Weyand and Bundle wanted to speak because they had not been given the opportunity to do so, until these posts.

What emerges is the even more remarkable fact that when it came time to present the science to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the Weyand-Bundle finding on the advantage was NOT even presented.  Neither Weyand nor Bundle even attended the hearing.

In other words, having identified on the very first day that there was an advantage ("we knew all along"), Weyand and Bundle did not have the opportunity to present what they knew, and their colleagues who represented them deemed it unnecessary to present this evidence.

The end result is that the judges at CAS made a decision based on half the scientific evidence (evidence which was, as I've described, flawed to begin with as a result of those creative comparisons), and completely overlooked the half that suggests the advantage.

It was, quite simply, a cover-up of omission.  How can the search for scientific truth be punctuated by:

1. Failure to make the correct comparison between a sprinter and another sprinter, but rather to include data from other research on distance runners?  This only obscures the truth, by creating a false similarity
2. Failure to even disclose the evidence that suggests, based on all that we know about the theory of sprinting performance, that the athlete in question has a large performance advantage?

For these reasons, this case should be kept alive, and the media, who have been astonishingly passive in trying to pursue the story, should be roused into answering these questions.  At the very least, the CAS should take heed of the fact that they had a hearing where evidence was not discussed in an objective manner, and their decision is thus an ignorant one.

The end result of this is that Pistorius was "cleared", based not on science, but on a legal process that was manipulated by science and the huge drive to permit Pistorius to run.  And make no mistake, there is inspiration in the story.

In fact, it got to the point where despite the science, I can appreciate the viewpoint of those who say "Sure, there is an advantage, but there's only one such athlete, and he's not running away with the gold medals, and so the good outweighs the bad, so let him compete despite that advantage".

I disagree with that, but I can respect the opinion of those who believe it.  What cannot be accepted, however, is the assertion that there is no advantage.  Everything about the science points to the advantage, from the pacing strategy he uses, to the German-testing that found mechanical and metabolic differences, to the Texas testing which provided evidence of an athletic advantage.

The science was clear, from the point of hypothesis, to the theory behind it, to the evidence.  The deceit in the case, fueled by a willfully ignorant media who would rather portray as villains anyone who dares suggest what the science really says, is equally clear, to me at least.

2012 will bring the discussion around once again.  Perhaps it will even defend its title of "Controversy of the year"!

Ross

P.S.  Honorable mentions in the category "Controversy of the Year" get their own post later today!

Merry Christmas from The Science of Sport

Merry Christmas everyone

To all our readers:

Thank you so much for your support and readership over the course of the year.  Christmas is now only days away, and being the time for giving, it's appropriate to give our thanks for all your comments, feedback, discussion and even criticisms!

The Year in Review, aka Science of Sport Awards will continue after a well-deserved Christmas break, sometime before the end of the year!  Have a wonderful time, wherever in the world you are!

Ross & Jonathan