On the Ball

The edited version of this story first appeared in Canadian Running Magazine

September/October 2008

People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there.
(Edwards 178)

Photo Elizabeth Bokfi

For some patrons at an Orillia, Ontario Tim Hortons® coffee time will never be the same. The great meeting of minds and legs that took place over a cup of java attracted more attention than all the sweet temptations behind the serving counter.

It has taken 22 years for Rick Ball's legs to carry him to this point, and as he removed his prosthetic walking leg and stepped into the socket of his runner's leg, one thing became clear: nothing would slow him down.

A motorcycle accident in 1986 left the Bass Lake Woodlands resident and Toronto Transit Commission employee a left, below-the knee (LBK) amputee. Ball lost control of the motorcycle he was driving when it collided with a load of lumber that had fallen off a pickup truck. A long period of recovery and rehabilitation followed.

Once a prosthesis was fitted to Ball's residual limb, it took several weeks for him to become accustomed to weight-bearing on his patella, or kneecap, the sense of pressure on the residual limb by the surrounding socket, and the lack of sensation in the prosthetic foot. After rehabilitation with his prosthetic limb, Ball took up bicycling to combat muscular atrophy, common after leg amputation.

Strengthening leg muscles prompted Ball to take on a more challenging weight-bearing exercise – cross-country skiing. Ball gradually trained his way to 100K bicycle rides and 15K cross-country ski runs. Taking out a YMCA membership in spring 2007 would change the course of his disability forever. Personal challenges aside, Ball would soon find himself rising to the public challenge surrounding the argument that a prosthetic runner's foot offers an unfair advantage.
Training on the indoor track at the YMCA cultivated Ball's interest in running. The purchase of Ossur's Flex Run™ runner's foot in October 2007 enabled him to train more comfortably. Approaching veteran runner Roger DePlancke, Ball explained his desire to run a marathon, and eventually to run at Boston, asking DePlancke to act as his coach.

DePlancke had 30 years of running experience and15 years of coaching the Orillia Legion
Athletic Club under his belt when Ball first approached him with his request.

“I was skeptical,” recalls DePlancke. “Rick had no running experience. He had unproven ability. When I met him, he was only running 15K per week. I thought he would have problems with friction, and possibly knee and hip injuries, because of the imbalance between his normal leg and the running leg,” remembers DePlancke. “I had never coached a runner with similar challenges. [However]Ball was eager to learn and committed to reaching his goals with the required patience necessary to run a marathon.”

And intense training did bring with it problems for Ball: blisters, the result of settling too deep inside the socket of his prosthetic, and skin irritation, caused by the build up of bacteria under the prosthetic sleeve. Skin difficulties forced Ball into an obligatory respite from running.

For a below-the-knee amputee, weight-bearing takes place at the patella - never at the bottom of the residual limb. Fit, and external influences such as temperature and humidity affect what takes place inside the prosthetic socket. Specially designed prosthetic socks are used to take up space inside a socket where the residual limb sits too deep. On very humid days, when the residual limb might be swollen, the amputee needs to then reduce the amount of socks worn inside his socket. For an amputee runner, the conditions change from day to day, and are ever-changing through the course of the day. Once a skin problem presents itself to the amputee, the prosthetic must be left off, and the skin left to heal. For a runner preparing to run a marathon, this can be detrimental to his training.

These unique challenges faced by amputee runners are precisely part of the argument for Ball when discussing the issue of amputees having an advantage over able-bodied athletes.

“I don't believe for one minute that an amputee runner has an advantage over an able-bodied runner,” Ball explains. “Those people saying that – they have no clue the pounding the [residual] limb takes – the runner's prosthetic foot is only designed to mimic the natural foot's energy return. I know – I have one good leg and one prosthetic. There is no way the prosthetic could be working better than my own leg – it would blow out the leg – I would sustain injuries.”

Jim Low, Ball's prosthetist at Barrie Prosthetics Orthotics agrees.

“When the carbon graphite components [of a runner's prosthetic] were tested during engineering studies, they were found to give 85 per cent energy return to the gait cycle – that is the strength of push the prosthetic foot gives at toe-off. Sounds impressive – however, our own ankle returns 250 per cent. There really is no comparison. An athlete running on natural feet has a huge advantage over an amputee running on something else. It's too bad. To credit the technology of the prosthetic device and not the efforts these amputees put forth really takes away from their accomplishment. Besides,” Low continues, “there's no one lining up to get their leg chopped off in order to benefit from the supposed advantage.”

The decision by the international Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to allow South African double-amputee Oscar Pistorius to compete for a position on South Africa's Olympic team has brought awareness to the controversy surrounding Ossur's Cheetah® feet, and the supposed advantage they provide amputees over able-bodied athletes. An earlier ruling in January by International Association of Athletics Federations against Pistorius generated a debate over whether or not this was fact. Initially, the IAAF ruled against Pistorius' request to compete in able-bodied category. After Pistorius' appeal, the CAS overturned the IAAF's decision, declaring that Pistorius' carbon-fibre prosthetic limbs do not give him an advantage over able-bodied athletes. Established in 1984, the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport is an international sports regulatory body which settles disputes involving athletes or sports organizations.

Nicholas Marchand, Director of Sales Canada for Ossur Prosthetics comments.

“He [Pistorius]is missing his legs below the knee and more specifically, his muscles. [Although] much of his power comes from his hips to compensate for this loss, Oscar must work that much harder than an able-bodied athlete during the sprint cycle. The Cheetah® Flex-Feet return approximately 80 per cent of the energy he puts in and [produce] no energy-generating power whatsoever. I am truly overjoyed that the CAS has ruled the way they have and that Oscar can now chase his dream of participating in the Olympics.”

This was positive news for Ball, whose strive to complete the Boston Marathon in able-bodied time is an intensely personal goal. Qualifying at Mississauga in able-bodied time allows him to choose which division he'll compete in at Boston: able-bodied or mobility impaired program.

Ball prepared for his Boston qualifier at Mississauga by slowly increasing endurance, eventually running 80K per week. His 80K consisted of:

40K long slow distance, completed 3-4 hours
25K intermediate pace on preferred hilly course, completed in 1.75-2 hours
15K broken into 7.5K warm-up and 7.5K at race pace, completed 1.5 hours or less

Over the course of Ball's eight month preparation training he participated in four 5K races, one 10K race, one half-marathon and one full-marathon. He logged over 1,500K in total.

Ball ran the Mississauga Marathon, held May 11, qualifying him for Boston 2009 with an able-bodied time of 3:17:38. Wearing bib No. 93, Ball crossed the finish line 93rd out of 1,387 runners.

When quizzed about future aspirations, he responds, “My goal is to run a marathon in sub-three hours – that would be a world record for amputees. The fastest time I know of is Amy Palmiero-Winters, in 3:04.”

Ball will run again at Massey, Ontario, July 20.

We'll take a large, double-double to go with that one.

 

The Cheetah® Flex-Feet

Ossur's Flex Run™

Sources: Edwards, Bob. Colombo's Canadian Quotations. Ed. John Robert Columbo. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1974, Ossur Prosthetics Canada, Barrie Prosthetics Orthotics, Ontario, Wikipedia.org – Court of Arbitration for Sport. Images courtesy of Ossur Americas/www.ossur.com