An athlete racing with a left-leg prosthesis might run more slowly than a competitor with a right-side prosthesis (pictured) at the Paralympic Games, because races are run in the anticlockwise direction.
The speed at which people run round a curve is thought to be limited by the forces exerted by the leg on the inside of the curve. To test this, Paolo Taboga of the University of Colorado Boulder and his team measured the running speeds of 11 athletes wearing leg prostheses. Those with one prosthetic leg were, on average, 3.9% slower when their prosthetic leg was on the inside of the curve, compared with when it was on the outside.
All track events at the Paralympic Games are run on an anticlockwise track, and so athletes with right-leg prostheses may have an advantage over those with left-leg ones.
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Right prosthetic legs have the edge. Nature 531, 417 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/531417d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/531417d
