NotNormativelyHuman 299
Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) whose ruling finally made
Pistorius eligible for competing in the "normal" Olympics. In a
statement after winning the court battle, Pistorius said that his focus
throughout had been "to ensure that disabled athletes be given the
chance to compete and compete fairly with able-bodied athletes"
("PistoriusEligibleforOlympics"n.pag.)butthedegreetowhichbio-
tech devices in this case created or precluded en-ablement was very
muchtheissue.
Even though his astounding performance up to par with able-bodied
athletes is surely exceptional, the Pistorius case nonetheless illustrates
howattemptstonormalizethenon-normative,evenifsuccessfulfroma
technical point of view, nonetheless remain socially and culturally an
incomplete project. Meanwhile, Pistorius is no longer an exception.
Recently, the German track and field athlete Marcus Rehm, winner in
the 2012 London Paralympics of man's Long Jump, and with a similar
handicap as Pistorius, was banned from competing in regular German
championships because it was feared that his prosthetic devices would
givehimanunfairadvantageoverotherathleteswhocouldonlyrelyon
their"natural"abilities("AuthoritiesQuestionWhetherProstheticGives
Long-Jumper Rehm Advantage " n. pag.). In this perspective, such (as
yet unusually gifted) "supercrip"-athletes—one might call them
disabilitycyborgs—bring to theforethelargersocialaswellascultural
questionoftheinclusionofpeoplewithdisabilitiesintotheactivitiesof
societyatlarge,eventhoughfromthefaultedperspectiveof,onceagain,
casting disability as something one might leave behind, make disappear
(ifonlyintheeyesofthebeholder).
Whileinthecasesofthedisabilitycyborgthequestionisthatofthe
integrationof handicapped athletes into competitive sports practiced by
non-handicapped people, there is also the problem of reverse
integration, more rarely encountered but by no means less contentious
than the first. A case in point is wheelchair basketball, a discipline that
has increasingly often been faced with the issue of whether able-bodied
athletes should be allowed to join teams of athletes with disability in
ordertoplaywheelchairbasketballonacompetitivebasis(Medlandand
Ellis-Hill 107). A 2012 University of Alberta (Canada) study has found
that women wheelchair basketball athletes say the inclusion of able-
bodied athletes into their team had many different types of advantages.
Oneofthequestionsaskedinthestudywas,"Doescompetingwithand