On June 4, 2018, double-amputee Blake Leeper ran 400 meters in a stunning 44.42 seconds — an eyelash behind the winning time of 44.22 at Saturday’s USATF National Championships in Eugene, Oregon.
Leeper, a former Spring Valley resident who trained with Olympians in Chula Vista, competed against able-bodied sprinters at that 2018 meet in Prague, Czech Republic.
And he wanted to do it again — at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials (later delayed till 2021).
But track authorities said no — demanding that he prove he didn’t have an unfair “overall competitive advantage.”
Though he would lower his personal best in the one-lap race to 44.38 seconds in 2019, he was barred from international meets with nondisabled athletes.
Leeper appealed his ban to a world sports court and lost. (More on that later.)
“I think they kind of missed the mark on that personally,” Leeper says. “I think we should have dove a little bit deeper — and asked more questions on why I was running so fast.”
On Tuesday, a decade after last running on the world stage, a 33-year-old Leeper is set to race fellow Paralympians in the T62 100 at Sébastien-Charléty Stadium in Paris. His 400 final is set for Monday, July 17.
Under rules of the International Paralympic Committee, however, he’ll be nearly 6 inches shorter than when he last ran at these IPC World Athletics Championships in 2013.
With his new J-shaped carbon-fiber RSPs — running-specific prostheses — Leeper will stand closer to 5-foot-8 than his former 6-foot-2.
He qualified for the 45-member Team USA in May at the national meet at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center, joining fellow double amputee Hunter Woodall, 24.
Leeper also overcame a one-year doping ban in 2016 — after testing positive for remnants of cocaine.
He immediately took responsibility and recently said: “I’m kind of glad I went to that [suspension] because it made me make a decision on my life: Am I going to better myself in this moment or am I going to continue down this road?”
Now father of a 3-year-old girl and engaged to her mother, Leeper lives in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles, does some acting and gives motivational talks for corporate clients.
“I tell them about my story about overcoming adversity,” he says.
Bleeding and Bone Spurs
Patrick Blake Leeper was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, with fibular hemimelia, a congenital birth defect that left him without most of his calf muscles, shin bones and feet.
He told the international Court of Arbitration for Sport that he first wore prosthetics at 9 months but they didn’t align with his leg stumps. He suffered frequent “bleeding, bone spurs and pain.”
Blake Leeper at Chula Vista nationals. Photo by Chris Stone 
Blake Leeper at Chula Vista nationals. Photo by Chris Stone 
Blake Leeper at Chula Vista nationals. Photo by Chris Stone 
Blake Leeper at Chula Vista nationals. Photo by Chris Stone 
Blake Leeper at Chula Vista nationals. Photo by Chris Stone 
Blake Leeper at Chula Vista nationals. Photo by Chris Stone
At age 4, he underwent amputative surgery — his bones and toes being “literally shaved down.” And then he sought a normal child’s athletic life.
In 2010, a year after launching his track career, Leeper began full-time training at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. At an Australian meet in 2011, he ran the 100 in a world-leading 11.18 for his category.
At the the 2012 Paralympics in London, Leeper won silver in the 400 (in 50.14 seconds) and a bronze medal in the 200 (22.46). In 2013, he took silver in the 100, 200 and 400 events at the IPC World Championships and was a member of the gold-medal winning 4×100 relay team.
At the time, he raced at 6-2 — his maximum allowable standing height. That MASH has since been reduced to 5-8 2/3.
After his doping ban ended, he ran the 400 — 8 feet short of a quarter-mile — in 45.25 at the June 2017 USATF Outdoor Championships against able-bodied stars.
With his world-record 44.42 at the Josef Odložil Memorial meet in Prague, he dreamed of following South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius as a “blade runner” in the Olympic Games.
But soon Leeper learned that his sport’s world governing body had notified USA Track and Field that his times at meets in California, Bermuda, Latvia and the Czech Republic had been “red-flagged.”
They said he hadn’t proved that his RSPs gave him no competitive advantage under Rule 144.3(d) of the IAAF Competition Rules — which bars athletes from unfair “assistance” of “any mechanical aid.”
On July 3, 2019, Leeper wrote to the IAAF (now World Athletics) for express permission to use his blades. But on Feb. 18, 2020, the IAAF denied his application, saying Leeper had “not met his burden of proof to show on the balance of probabilities that his use of prostheses would not provide him with an overall competitive advantage over an athlete not using such prostheses.”
The rejection came despite a highly technical study done on Leeper and others in August 2018 at the University of Colorado Applied Biomechanics Lab in Boulder and a nearby high school track.
Drs. Alena M. Grabowski, Paolo Taboga and Owen Beck compared Leeper, other athletes with bilateral transtibial amputations and non-amputee athletes, and came to some startling conclusions.
The so-called Grabowski Report said Leeper, who lowered his best 100 time to 10.91 seconds, was 43.3% slower than non-amputee sprinters in maximum acceleration.
“Mr. Leeper’s average time to pass the 20m mark was 32% slower than the sub-elite non-amputee sprinters and 40% slower than elite non-amputee sprinters,” the report said.
Even more jaw-dropping: Under Grabowski’s analysis, Leeper could run 400 meters 1.81 seconds faster if he had “intact biological legs.”
“Applying Dr. Grabowski’s analysis, Mr. Leeper would be capable of running the 400m event in a time of 42.57 seconds if he was not a double amputee,” said a four-member panel of CAS arbitrators — all from the United Kingdom.
“In other words, Mr. Leeper would be capable of running the 400m event in a time that is almost half a second faster than the current world record” of 43.03 by South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk in 2016.
The panel also scoffed at the suggestion Leeper with normal legs could run 1.41 seconds faster than his personal best at 100 meters.
“Accordingly,” said the panel report, “he would be capable of running the 100m in 9.50 seconds — almost a tenth of a second faster than the current world record. … The Panel regards this somewhat surprising proposition as a telling indication that there are other factors at play” that Leeper’s blades give him an advantage.
Leeper didn’t give up without a fight.
On July 13 and 15, 2020, Leeper and six advocates attended a CAS hearing by “video-link.”
His team argued that the IAAF rule purposely discriminated against the disabled.
“Although the Rule was enacted in 2015, the IAAF permitted Mr. Leeper to compete with his RSPs until late 2017,” the CAS report said. “It was only after he ran an Olympic qualifying time of 44.42 seconds that the IAAF decided to apply the rule in order to bar him from competing at the highest level of elite competitive athletics. This reveals the true object and purpose of the rule.”
Moreover, Leeper argued, able-bodied athletes including quarter-milers taller than him take part in meets without any assessment of whether their limb proportions or height are within or outside “normal” ranges.
He said this indicates “no scientific evidence” exists that an able-bodied athlete with longer limbs or greater height has any kind of competitive advantage in the 400 event.
And Leeper had a world-class sprinter in his corner — his coach, Willie Gault.
A star Tennessee hurdler who went on to win a Super Bowl ring with the Chicago Bears, Gault would set world age-group sprint records in his late 40s and 50s.
Gault wrote a letter to the CAS explaining that Leeper’s improved times were a result of changes to his training and technique — and not his RSPs.
Opposing Leeper was another celebrity athlete — former world record holder and two-time Olympic champion hurdler Edwin Moses.
Moses said use of RSPs “appear to confer significant advantages,” citing lower impact and demands on the user’s cardiovascular and pulmonary systems.
“RSPs are lighter than an intact lower leg,” Moses argued, and “the body does not need to divert oxygen via the blood to the lower leg extremities; instead the oxygen can be concentrated in an athlete’s back, core and upper legs.”
RSPs allow users to run taller than their “natural height” and take longer strides, he said, adding: “This gives them an important advantage which is both ‘unnatural’ and ‘unfair.’”
And “unlike biological legs, RSPs do not fatigue during a race,” Moses was summarized as saying. “Moreover, an athlete who uses RSPs does not experience buildup of lactic acid beyond their upper legs. As a result, athletes who use RSPs avoid the effects of this ‘major constraining factor.’”
In the end, the CAS panel agreed with Moses and others — and barred Leeper from competing at the Olympic level in his then-too-long RSPs
The IAAF, it said, established “that there is a likelihood that RSPs enable some amputee athletes to run faster times in the 400m event than they would be able to achieve if they had intact biological legs.”
But Leeper won a major ruling on the rule itself.
The panel concluded that the IAAF rule was “indirectly discriminatory” and violated the IAAF Constitution.
“It is apparent to the Panel that the rights and legitimate interests of disabled athletes were, at best, a secondary consideration in the IAAF’s regulatory decision-making,” it said. “The apparent lack of attention and concern regarding the impact of the Rule on the rights and interests of disabled athletes is regrettable and may explain the IAAF’s failure to recognise the unnecessary and disproportionate character of the Rule.”
The result (shown) was an amendment to IAAF rules. Deleted was the demand that disabled athletes prove they have no unfair edge.
“The mere fact that RSPs may enable some amputee athletes to run faster times than if they had intact biological legs, however, does not automatically lead to the conclusion that it is necessary for the IAAF to impose the burden of proving the absence of any competitive advantage on an athlete who wishes to run with a mechanical aid,” the panel said.
The panel said IAAF reliance on a so-called “precautionary basis” was misplaced.
“This might have application in the context of horse-doping, but it has little application in the context of this dispute,” the panel said, which also noted the existence of TUEs — therapeutic use exemptions that allow some athletes to take banned doctor-ordered medications.
“Athletes who require otherwise prohibited medical support in order to overcome a medical condition … could apply to the use of mechanical aids by amputee athletes,” it said.
The panel said athletes like Leeper should not be required “to prove a negative: namely, that they derive no overall competitive advantage from having prosthetic rather than biological limbs” and it highlighted a “real risk that disabled athletes will be forced to incur significant financial costs which they are unable to recover from the IAAF even if they succeed in demonstrating that their mechanical aids do not confer any overall athletic advantage.”
It added: “These risks do not apply to able-bodied athletes who do not require mechanical aids in order to compete in the same events.”
The result? From now on, the burden of proof for barring a blade-runner is on his or her national track federation. Not the athlete.
‘Keep Working Hard’
The CAS decision — delivered Oct. 23, 2020 — barred Leeper from international meets with his longer blades. But Leeper appears resigned to not making the 2024 Summer Games in Paris with his shorter ones.
But he said: “If I keep working hard and keep training hard, I really think I can get back down to where how I used to be running,” he told Times of San Diego in May.
“Obviously, I was disappointed in my decision with the length of my blades,” he said. “But moving forward, I think it’s pretty exciting to know that the court has kind of looked at that situation to say, you know what: That’s not right. The burden of proof should not be on the athlete and it should be on the federation.”
He said he hopes more disabled athletes — at least those using prosthetic limbs — can compete at the Olympics or World Athletics Championships.
“I dropped almost 6 inches in height,” he said, “and I lost my confidence, I lost my strength, I lost my cadence, my rhythm. … The track seems so much more bigger that it used to when I was 6-2.”
But his coach, Jeff Fisher, told him: “Let’s try to make the track small again for you. Let’s build your confidence back up.”
His recent training — including 800-meter races in competition for better endurance — are boosting his comeback hopes.
He’s the only disabled athlete with Elevation Training led by Fisher.
“It’s pretty cool to train alongside other able-bodied athletes,” Leeper said. “At the end of the day, regardless of my disability, we still have the same mindset, the same goal of … putting PRs out there, breaking season bests.”
Also helping his self-image: other athletes who work out at UCLA, including members of Bobby Kersee’s famed training group such as Olympic 800 champion Athing Mu, former world record hurdler Keni Harrison and a star of the 2022 Eugene world meet — 400-meter hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
“I see Athing and Bobby Kersey,” Leeper says. “It’s pretty cool … to be able to train alongside of them. … (and) when I’m running my last rep and I hear, you know, Athing or Sydney yelling for me: ‘Come on, Blake. Come on, Blake.’ If that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is.”
Leeper started training last August with the 2023 Paris world meet (and 2024 Paralympics) in mind. He does nightly visualizations of his races.
“I try to see myself in the uniform, see myself in the stadium and just be mentally prepared and be at peace,” he said. “So when I’m on the line, when the gun goes off, I know I can give my best performance — because I know if I give my best performance, I’ll be on that podium.”
