Blake Leeper loses appeal at CAS

Admin l Friday, June 11, 2021

 

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed the appeal filed on 1 May 2021 by US bilateral transtibial amputee sprinter Blake Leeper against the decision taken by the Mechanical Aids Review panel established by World Athletics (WA) dated 26 April 2021 in which the athlete’s 24 December 2020 application to run at WA-sanctioned events on Running Specific Prostheses (RSPs) that give him an overall standing height of 185.42 cm (6’1”) was denied.

The WA panel did so on grounds that the height of the proposed RSPs conferred upon Mr Leeper an “overall competitive advantage over an athlete not using such aid” and were accordingly “not allowed” by Article R6.3.4 of WA’s Technical Rules. Accordingly, the decision rendered by the WA Mechanical Aids Review panel on 26 April 2021 is confirmed by CAS.

By decision of 26 October 2020, a different CAS Panel had already ruled that Blake Leeper could not use his former running-specific prostheses (giving him an overall standing height of 189.2 cm) at WA sanctioned 400m events, including WA Series competitions and the Olympic Games. An appeal filed by Blake Leeper against that CAS award at the Swiss Federal Tribunal was dismissed.

The Panel of CAS arbitrators appointed to decide this second appeal held a hearing with the parties by video-conference on 3, 4 and 8 June 2021. The main issue to be determined by the Panel was whether WA has established that the specific RSPs proposed by Mr Leeper confer, through extra height, a running-speed advantage that Mr Leeper would not otherwise have.

The MASH (Maximum Allowable Standing Height) methodology, first implemented by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) in January 2018, is the most recent iteration of a method to assess the maximum “natural” height of double amputee athletes. It is based on an equation that adds together the lengths of his/her thigh, upper arm, forearm, and sitting height, after weighting each metric by an empirically determined coefficient.

MASH also includes a pure error factor of 1.91 cm to account for normal variation. Thus, the MASH formula adds 1.91 cm to the predicted height. MASH is currently being employed to calculate the maximum permitted length of RSPs. Beyond that length, an athlete using RSPs is considered to be running unnaturally tall and therefore to have a disallowable advantage.