With the Paralympics very much in our minds after Wednesdays’ spectacular opening ceremony our focus this week is the sporting innovation made famous by Oscar Pistorius, the South African ‘Blade Runner’, is a world champion sprinter  who has broken his own world records some 30 times. Our own record holding team GB athlete Jonnie Peacock is set to compete against Oscar in the T44 100m on Thursday 6^th September.

The Flex Foot™ or blade runner was invented by Van Phillips an amputee who was frustrated with the lack of flexibility of the existing wooden artificial feet. " Switching his studies to prosthetics, Van Phillips worked with aerospace composite engineer Dale Abildskov to explore the potential of carbon fibre, going on to create the Flex-Foot, a breakthrough design that simulated the spring action of the human foot.

Today, the advantages of that original invention are incorporated in an extensive range of feet to suit individual needs.