U.S. sprinter Leeper, double amputee, sees Olympic hopes at risk
Blake Leeper, one of the world’s fastest doubleamputee athletes, will have to race on a significantly smaller set of running blades if he wants to compete for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team, World Athletics ruled Monday.
Leeper, who was fifth in the 400 meters at the U.S. track and field championships in 2019, was in contention to compete on a relay at the World Athletics Championships that year, but the sport’s world governing body ruled that his blades made him “unnaturally tall.”
Leeper was born with both legs missing below the knee and at age 4, he underwent amputative surgery to allow an optimal fit for prosthetics. He won two medals at the London Paralympics in 2012 but then decided to run against nondisabled athletes as well.
He used the same size blades in competition for five years before they were outlawed, then switched to a set that made him about 2 inches shorter in hopes of gaining entry into the Olympic trials in June. He has said a smaller set of blades would force him to essentially relearn how to run.
In the decision Monday, a special expert panel for World
Athletics, the sport’s governing body, concluded that even the blades that made him 2 inches
shorter would give him an unfair advantage over nondisabled runners.
“The reports submitted satisfied the Panel that there is a direct relationship between leg length and running speed and that therefore the height of Mr. Leeper’s running specific prostheses result in him running faster in the 400meter event than would otherwise be the case,” World Athletics said in a statement.
The decision means that Leeper’s last hope for competing in the Olympics rests with a federal court in Switzerland.
In October, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the world’s top sports court, ruled that standards set by the International Paralympic Committee supported World Athletics’ argument that Leeper’s running blades made him taller than he would be had he been born with fully functional legs.
Leeper has appealed that ruling to the Swiss Supreme Court, and he said he would appeal Monday’s as well.
In setting the standards, athletics organizations have cited research that involved only Caucasian and Asian athletes. Leeper is Black. In Leeper’s appeal, lawyers cited studies that suggest people of African descent can have longer legs than people who have different genealogy. The World Athletics panel denied that its decision was discriminatory and questioned the data cited by the scientists Leeper consulted.
“It’s not right that World Athletics continues to discriminate against disabled Black athletes,” Leeper said in a statement Monday.
World Athletics had argued that someone with a torso the size of Leeper’s would be 5foot9, according to standard metrics, and that his blades made him run as though he were 68. In fact, Leeper was about 62 on his old blades. The ones that World Athletics rejected Monday make him about 6foot, roughly the average height of other top 400meter runners, many of whom have long legs.