Need new legs? How prosthetics are making athletes faster

They’re already waiting on the shelf: futuristic blades, as if you could soon just buy yourself a new pair of legs. Paralympic athlete Fleur Jong uses a sport version of these blades — not robotic legs, but specially designed prosthetics built for speed and jumping power. In early June, she jumped 6.86 meters, setting a new long jump world record. For comparison: the world record for non-Paralympic athletes stands at 7.52 meters. What if, one day, we could all just buy a pair and suddenly jumping 7.5 meters becomes achievable for everyone?

It raises a bigger question: how far are we willing — and able — to go when it comes to upgrading our bodies? Technology is already in and around us. We wear glasses, use pacemakers, fill cavities with ceramic. Fleur Jong lost her lower legs due to an infection and got advanced blades in return. Now she performs at a level where the line between human and machine begins to blur.

Upgrade your body
Biohacking is no longer science fiction. Think of the human body as a system you can tweak: update the software, improve the hardware. There are already people with chips under their skin, so when do the better legs arrive?

It sounds strange, until you look at the running blades used by athletes like Jong. What started as a prosthetic has evolved into a technological extension that not only replaces, but sometimes even enhances. Speed, bounce, stability — all designed down to the millimeter.

A new athletic frontier
What if those blades become so advanced that athletes start replacing a leg voluntarily, not out of necessity, but out of ambition? And what happens when autonomous robots start competing? Are we heading toward a new kind of sport?

A similar debate is already happening around the Enhanced Games, scheduled for 2026. There, athletes will be allowed to use performance-enhancing substances under supervision. The comparison is clear: if a high-tech blade can make someone faster, how is that fundamentally different from a chemical that aims to do the same? Both are forms of technological enhancement — one visible, the other chemical. Perhaps in the future, sport won’t just be about what the body can do, but also about how we choose to extend it.