The 13th Paralympic Summer Games

No matter which country racks up the most medals at the Paralympics, Iceland will be celebrating. It's home to Ossur, the prosthetics titan behind the Cheetah Flex-Foot. Amputee athletes wearing the J-shaped carbon-fiber feet won every sprinting medal in Athens in 2004. Ossur expects another bumper haul in Beijing. About 90% of amputee sprinters in the Paralympics use Cheetahs, including South African runner and defending champ Oscar Pistorius (pictured below), who also competes against able-bodied athletes and successfully fought a ruling by the international track federation that the Cheetahs were performance enhancing. "Ossur is not in the business of enhancement," says CEO Jon Sigurdsson, who argues the athletes are improving prosthetics -- testing technology that will eventually aid nonathletes -- not the other way around. "These athletes are the equivalent of racing drivers for car manufacturers." -- TB