Flex-Foot Cheetah

The Flex-Foot Cheetah is a prosthetic human foot replacement developed by biomedical engineer Van Phillips, who had lost a leg below the knee at age 21; the deficiencies of existing prostheses led him to invent this new prosthesis.

The Flex-Foot Cheetah and similar models are worn by Oscar Pistorius and other amputee athletes in the Paralympics and elsewhere.

It is made from carbon fibre, and unlike all previous foot prostheses,[citation needed] it stores kinetic energy from the wearer's steps as potential energy, like a spring, allowing the wearer to run and jump.

[1] Carbon fibre is actually a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer, and is a strong, light-weight material used in a number of applications, including sporting goods like baseball bats, car parts, helmets, sailboats, bicycles and other equipment where rigidity and high strength-to-weight ratio is important.

[2] About 90 percent of amputee Paralympics runners use a variation of the original Flex-Foot design, as well as thousands of athletes around the world.