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For the sake of intellectual honesty, let me state for the record that not only am I a track geek but that I've had this conversation numerous times over the past 15 years.
Pistorious has an artificial advantage and should not be allowed to compete. Period. End of story. He actually has several advantages.
First, the Dr. Gailey that's quoted as saying that a natural leg returns 240% of the energy needs to check his figures. The numbers he's using (I think) involves the comparison of the energy from the downward part of the stride compared to the upwards motion. Both involve large muscular movements. The "spring" is the muscles stretching and rebounding within the running stride and require large amounts of movement to acheive efficiently. What he's trying to say is that Pistorious is running on a superball while the able-bodied are running on jet packs. It's not a fair comparison at all.
Second, and probably more importantly, Pistorious has huge weight advantage. It takes a lot less energy to move 200 lbs. up to 20 mph than it does 175 lbs - or 150 lbs. That's why the classic sprinter build is under 6'. Ben Johnson, who I mention because of his own competitive advantage problems, is closer to 5' 6". Dennis Green, my all-time favorite sprinter, is about 5' 8". I've met and spent time with both.
The stride length issue would come more into play if Pistorius was a middle-distance or long-distance runner since efficiently adding 3" to a stride would cut 15 seconds off a 1500m time (same amount of energy expended with both strides). That's the difference between having the words "World Record Holder" and "Decent Division III Runner" in that event.
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