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Journalism of Courage
Competing largely against himself, Markus Rehm – the para-athletics legend – leapt a distance of 8.43m at the World Championships last week. It fetched him his eighth long jump gold medal. But the reverberations of it were felt much beyond the podium.
Rehm, who lost his right leg in a wakeboarding accident at 14 and competes with carbon-bibre prosthetics, finds himself in the same league as the world’s best able-bodied long jumpers. His effort of 8.43m was 4cm better than Mattia Furlani’s jump, which helped him win the gold medal at the Tokyo World Championships, and 2cm better than the Indian national record. With a personal best of 8.72m, he is now aiming to do what no man has done before: break the 9 metre barrier.
On one hand, Rehm’s achievement is seen as a giant leap for para-athletics. At the same time, it has also reignited an enduring debate: Is it the blade or just his talent?
“I see there is always a debate about how the blade gives an undue advantage, but I think it is not comparable at all,” says Heinrich Popow, a former Paralympic champion sprinter and now a technical contractor. “I don’t think losing a leg is advantageous in any way. Able-bodied jumping is about the usage of the kinetic energy, while the blade jumping is about the usage of the bending energy. Pole Vault can be comparable for both able-bodied and para athletes, but not long jump.”
Throughout his pathbreaking journey, Rehm has often split opinion.
The German took to para-athletics in 2009 after he met with a wakeboarding accident. “I was 14 years old when the incident happened, and one day my mother told me that the doctors would cut my right leg off. I had no idea how my life with prosthetics would be,” Rehm said.
Rehm now jokes that had someone told him in 2009 that he would go on to win eight World Championships and four Paralympic long jump gold medals (he also has two World and one Paralympic gold in 4x100m relay), he would have ‘laughed it off’. “But 16 years later, here I am,” Rehm says.
During this period, he has transcended the boundaries of able-bodied and para competitions.
Initially, he would compete in both. “When I started long jump, I used to jump just 6m. Everybody looked at me like just another disabled guy who is doing sports. I would have competitions with able-bodied friends of mine,” Rehm says. “One of them asked me if I lose by just 50 cm, they will consider it as my win. That day I lost by 50 cm, but over time, the gap decreased, and eventually I started defeating them comprehensively.”
He started competing at the German Championships once he consistently jumped better than the able-bodied athletes and eventually went on to become his country’s champion. After winning the gold medal at the 2012 London Paralympics, Rehm decided to compete in more able-bodied tournaments.
He won the German title once again in 2014, but it was overturned following a protest from other competitors. Later, his attempts to participate in the World Championships and the 2016 Rio Olympics were quashed by World Athletics as Rehm could not prove that his blade didn’t give him any advantages. The world body still considers prosthetics a mechanical aid, making the para athletes ineligible to compete with their able-bodied counterparts.
“I always want to play a fair competition and be a fair athlete. I am happy to compete together even when they don’t consider my results, but people get offended, and they don’t like that they lost to a disabled guy. That is why I like the nickname Blade Jumper,” Rehm says.
A prosthetist himself, Rehm has studied the science behind his jumps deeply. However, there isn’t a clear-cut answer to whether the prosthetics give him a distinct advantage over the other athletes.
Professor Wolfgang Potthast, a researcher at the Institute of Biomechanics and Orthopaedics of the German Sport University in Cologne, noted that the prosthetics gave Rehm a ‘less efficient start on the runway but a more efficient jump’.
“We saw disadvantages in the run-up for athletes with amputations of the lower thigh that we could determine were due to the prosthesis. But in the movement techniques, we noted an advantage due to improved jump efficiency. These are two completely different movements and cannot be offset,” Potthast told Reuters.
Popow, meanwhile, explained that the variables in the blade jumping make it tough for the para-athletes. “The socket of the blade is attached to the human skin, and the residual portion of the amputation is very painful. There are a lot more variables than able-bodied jumping, making it disadvantageous. So, I don’t think there is any comparison that should exist,” he tells The Indian Express.
Rehm also claims the same when talking about his mechanism. “Running with one blade and one leg is a different ball game. The blade doesn’t generate as much force against the ground as the biological legs,” he says. “If it is so easy to jump 8m with blades, why are others not doing it?”
