Prosthetic Athletics

I’m more than a little impressed by the audacity of Philippe Croizon. Despite having had his arms and legs amputated, he’s successfully swum the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, a chunk of the Red Sea, and is now swimming Bering Strait.

To do this, he swims freestyle, with flipper-like leg prosthetics attached to the stumps at his knees. I’m intrigued that he still does arm strokes, despite having clearly atrophied muscles and no arm prosthetics – I’m guessing they help him with stability and steering.

What with Oskar Pistorius coming in 8th in the 400m at the London Olympics with his Cheetah Flex-Foot prosthetics, we’re closing quickly on a line where the performance of human engineered body parts exceeds that of natural ones in certain contexts.