18 Jun 2016

Blade Jumper can't prove prothesis doesn't provide leg up

8:59 am on 18 June 2016

The Paralympic long jump champion Markus Rehm has seen his dream of competing at the Rio Olympics fade after the IAAF said that the German had failed to prove he does not gain an unfair advantage as a prosthesis-wearing athlete.

Nicknamed "Blade Jumper", the 2012 Paralympics gold medallist and 2014 German national long jump champion was hoping to become the second athlete with a carbon fibre prosthesis to compete at the Olympics after South Africa's Oscar Pistorius in 2012.

However, IAAF president Sebastian Coe, said Rehm has not been able to prove his case.

Rehm had commissioned a scientific study, hoping to prove he did not get an advantage, with a report last month indicating no clear edge over able-bodied athletes.

Germany's Markus Rehm

Germany's Markus Rehm Photo: Photosport

A new IAAF ruling requires amputee competitors to prove themselves they do not have an advantage over able-bodied athletes.

The study was conducted by several universities in Germany, the United States and Japan and showed that amputees such as Rehm, who lost his lower right leg in a boating accident as a teenager, had a less efficient start but a more efficient jump.

The 27-year-old jumped a para-athletics world record of 8.40 metres to win the 2015 IPC world title in Doha, a distance that would have beaten Britain's 2012 London Olympics gold medallist Greg Rutherford by nine centimetres.

-Reuters