PARALYMPICS long jump champion Markus Rehm saw his hopes of competing in the Olympics dashed last week when the IAAF said he has so far failed to prove that his prosthetic limb does not give him a “competitive advantage”.
Germany’s Rehm, a singleleg amputee who competes wearing a carbon fibre blade prosthesis following a wakeboarding accident when he was a teenager, improved his own world T44 long jump record to 8.40m when winning his third successive title at the IPC Athletics World Championships in Doha last October.
That mark achieved by Rehm, who jumps off his blade, is just one centimetre off the leap Britain’s Greg Rutherford recorded to win the IAAF world title in Beijing last August, while the distance would have been enough for Olympic gold in London in 2012.