Oscar Pistorius' blade maker: Inside his Arkansas workshop | Forensic Files

Nearly 9,000 miles away from South Africa, here in Fort Smith, Arkansas, we found a man who knew Oscar Pistorius
before he became an international icon. My name is Francois Vanderwat and I helped create the Blade
Runner. We originally started just drawing on a piece of paper what a blade maybe should look like. And I mean,
there's no science behind it. It was kind of a trial and error. It's like shoes. You got to make that custom fit
for you. So, how does this work? So, here we have what we call a regular walking prosthetic. So, when we work
with an athlete, this part is going to be taken away. This is what we uh call the cheetah foot. So, it's very similar
to what Oscar used. And this specific model was actually inspired by Oscar. This is made of carbon fiber and he
sprints with the blade. Yes. So, this connection point here is where we can now start making adjustments. This is
spike plate. So, uh Nike actually developed this specifically for this foot. You're always thinking, what can I
do better? What can I align better? Can I make it faster? Can I help improve his
performance? But is it an an advantage? No, it's not an advantage because this will only gives back what is put into
it. So if the athlete doesn't apply the force or the load to it, it's not going to return that. I think it's more of
optimizing to complement what he naturally has. It feels like, wow, this is pretty unreal to see you go so fast
around the track.

Thousands of miles from his native South Africa, Francois Van Der Watt, the man who designed the blades that propelled sprinter Oscar Pistorius to capture his dreams, gives "48 Hours"' Peter Van Sant an inside look at his Fort Smith prosthetics workshop.

Brief Summary

Francois Vanderwat discusses designing Oscar Pistorius's prosthetic blades and their impact on athletic performance.

Key points

Creating the Blade Runner. Francois Vanderwat shares the journey of designing Oscar Pistorius's iconic prosthetic.
The Science Behind the Blade. Francois explains the mechanics and adjustments made for the prosthetic.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's like shoes. You got to make that custom fit for you.

Francois Vanderwat on creating the Blade Runner prosthetic.

0:28WatchJun 12, 2014

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