Blade Runner
Oscar Pistorius is forcing the world to rethink what it means to be disabled
The view from high in the athletics stadium shows tiny figures moving on an orange track; the Italian voice-over welcomes TV viewers to the 2007 Golden Gala meeting in
Nonetheless, the rational mind informs us that these are artificial pegs that cannot match a complex and dynamic interaction of sinew, blood vessel and muscle. The idea is strengthened when the starter says "On your marks", and Pistorius is ungainly as he crouches in his lane. The gun sounds and he thrusts forward; but he's slower than the rest of the field, taking shorter strides, looking unbalanced. He's in an outside lane of the staggered start of the 400-metre event and soon all his rivals have caught and passed him. It's no contest and sympathy wells in the onlooker.
Then something happens. Pistorius seems to steady himself, push out his chest, gather all bodily power into his solar plexus and ram it down into his hips and thighs, defying fate and spurning pity. And he takes off. It is amazing to watch. "Blade Runner" starts overtaking runners down the stretch, one by one, then hurls himself at the finishing line. Second. Achieving silver at a European Golden League athletics meeting is a notable achievement for anyone, let alone a disabled runner. The video of the race - titled The Fastest Thing on No Legs - fast became a YouTube favourite. Everyone was agog.
Well, not quite everyone. Some able-bodied athletes didn't like the look of those blades from behind. And international athletics officials were worried. How can a man with no legs run as fast as top able-bodied athletes? What would happen if this guy won a major race, an Olympic medal?
Legalistic minds started whirring and honed in on the weapons of "crime" - those gleaming blades, officially known as Ossur Cheetahs. Biokinetic testing was ordered, and the artificial legs were deemed to give Oscar Pistorius an advantage. He was banned from running against people with no physical disability. The irony had a black humour to it.
Oscar Pistorius was born to Henke and Sheila Pistorius in Johannesburg in 1986 and attended Constantia Kloof Primary School
An anecdote told by his grandmother illustrates the child's upbeat attitude. When the nine-year-old was fitted with new prosthetics, with toes on them for the first time, he arrived to visit her, leaning from the car window, waving the legs in the air and yelling ''Look at my toes.'' But even as a boy, steely determination was evident. In an interview, father Henke said he always knew his son could succeed in anything he put his mind to. When he reached his teens, Pistorius chose to become a boarder at Pretoria Boys High School University of Pretoria
After just six months of athletics training, Pistorius was deemed competitive enough to travel to a United States Athens
World championship medals were a formality, and these days Pistorius is in a class of his own in paraplegic sprinting. The 400-metres is his best event, but he also dominates in the 200-metres and 100-metres. But he's quick to point out that 95 percent of his racing to date has been against able-bodied athletes. In 2005, he dared to line up in the South African open athletics championships - and finished sixth in the final. In the 2007 renewal he won the silver medal.
International competition in open company was the obvious next step, which is how that fateful televised race in Rome Sheffield , England
When it became clear that Oscar Pistorius's ultimate target was to compete in the Olympic Games, alarm bells rang.
Concern was voiced that his blades actually propelled him faster than flesh-and-blood legs would. Athletes who'd spent years preparing to win an Olympic medal started imagining the "snick, snick, snick" sound of Pistorius's Cheetahs was actually a giant pair of scissors snipping away at their dreams. Officials feared recriminations - and lawsuits. Arguments against Pistorius's participation in open company are that he doesn't have calf muscles, which tire markedly towards the end of a long sprint. Also, it is difficult to equate the length of Cheetahs to a human leg and they could give a longer stride than a normal leg. And then there is the perceived "spring effect". The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ordered scientific testing of Pistorius and his blades. This was done in Germany
The culprits - the Cheetahs - are manufactured by Icelandic firm Ossur, which has been in the prosthetics business for more than 30 years. They are very different from modern "walking" legs that have mechanical joints and microprocessors to operate them. These carbon-fibre swoops are simple and graceful, like a cat's back legs, and withstand enormous tensions. Pistorius helped Ossur's technicians refine the blades to their present excellence - destroying prototypes along the way - and they are now used by all the world's leading disabled runners. Pretoria University
He smiles at the youthful throng and murmurs approvingly of the hordes of pretty girls. In the coffee shop he orders tuna mayonnaise on brown bread - not much mayo, no chips, training for the Olympics.
In this setting, Pistorius looks like just another student, not someone at the centre of an international athletics rumpus. There's no hint of a limp, or the artificial legs in his faded jeans, as he saunters down the concourse. He's a celebrity here; people hail him with a star-struck look in their eyes. Young women go out of their way to say hello and get noticed. But the casual look, the polite and friendly demeanour, belie a very determined man on a serious mission.
Pistorius has just returned from Europe where he met lawyers and media representatives. These people will be critical to his challenge to the IAAF's ban on him competing in open athletics events. He has lodged an appeal against the IAAF ruling with the international Court of Arbitration for Sport and is being backed by Brian Frasure, the American athlete whose world record he broke. They fly the flag for all paraplegic athletes around the world now affected by the ban. Key to the appeal is a conviction that the IAAF's testing was scientifically flawed and that evidence from more comprehensive biokinetic measurements shows that the blades confer no advantage. On Pistorius's side are leading American biokineticists Hugh Herr, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robert Gailey, of the University of Miami
The appeal court date was set for April 28-30, 2008. Regardless of the outcome (not known at the time of going to print) Pistorius has accepted that the slow turning of justice's wheels means he will probably not have enough time to qualify for this year's Beijing Olympics. The last chance to qualify for the South African Olympic team was mid-April. Even then there is the small matter of him running a time fast enough to gain automatic entry to the Games. At present his best 400-metre time is 46.3 seconds and Olympic qualifying is 45.5 seconds. He is confident he can go that low - but probably not without the open competition from which he is currently barred. Now the appeal has become about winning the right to compete at the London Olympics in 2012.
In the meantime, the first goal is the Paralympic Games in Beijing
Ampie Louw is an archetypal athletics coach. He could be a character from a South African Chariots of Fire with his grounded Afrikaner sensibilities. In his 30 years of training athletes, he's seldom seen a born champion like Pistorius. ''He doesn't settle for second best and has a total will to win.'' Then there's Pistorius's determination, and his maturity. ''I met him when he was 17, but he was already a grown-up,''
Louw muses. A typical training day sees Pistorius rising at 6am or 7am, after eight or nine hours of sleep at his Pretoria Nashua
There are frequent consultations with Team Oscar - agent, physiotherapist, dietician, biokineticist, strength trainer, psychologist . . . Actual running only starts at 3.30pm: hours of track work aimed at improving speed and stamina. At 6pm it's back to the gym for half an hour of cycling to ''warm down'' and burn off lingering calories in the system. Keeping weight off is as important as eating enough to fuel the training.
Then he relaxes for a couple of hours. Or goes jolling. Coach Ampie Louw told Wired magazine that the biggest obstacle in the way of Pistorius's ambitions was his hectic social life. A wide circle of friends - from Springbok rugby player Pierre Spies to varsity nerds - doesn't preclude him from finding time for his family, with whom he has always been close. His father Henke, who once ran a family business, now lives in St Francis. His mother, Sheila, died six years ago from an allergic reaction to medication.
Pistorius credits much of his positive life philosophy to the influence of his parents. His father taught him that whatever he did he should do to the best of his ability, while his mother instilled in him an abiding belief in that very ability. ''There is nothing an able-bodied person can do that I can't do,'' he says with offhand certainty. His father still provides support, and Pistorius says he draws strength from his memory of his mother's wisdom in every race he runs.
Then there are his siblings, older brother Carl, 23, and Aimée, 18. The trio share a strong bond. "We are completely one in all the things that count in life," Carl confirms. For his part, Carl says his brother is not so much a best friend as his "shadow". "If there is one person who has always got my back it's my boet." Pistorius was a "hooligan" of a younger brother. "And nothing much has changed," laughs Carl, but adds: "He also has a deep side; massive compassion for people."
Among Carl's abiding memories of their childhood is when he and Pistorius - eight and six at the time - undertook a marathon swim across a lake near the family's holiday home in the former Eastern Transvaal to test out homemade flippers their father had fashioned for the younger Pistorius boy. It was an endurance feat that astonished even the youngsters. He also recalls hilarious moments in which Oscar's artificial legs played a key part in pranks played on unwitting strangers. ''Oscar was always my equal physically. He never sat down, he always came to the party.''
If you want a glimpse of the "fire" that powers the Oscar Pistorius engine, try asking him if he has considered reducing the efficacy of his blades to satisfy the athletics authorities. The response is instantaneous, with a hint of irritation: ''I'm already at a disadvantage. Why should I put myself at more of a disadvantage?'' Retreat is a last resort.
It has been said that Oscar Pistorius is forcing the world to rethink what it means to be disabled. He's not about to let up on that now.
The Olympic 400-metre qualifying time of 45.5 seconds would be a personal best for Pistorius, but it would probably only get him into the second round of heats at the Games, nowhere near a final, where the winner will clock around 43 seconds. So is the "Blade Runner" any real threat to potential medalists?
Rules are rules and have an inalienable purpose - to ensure fair contest. Nonetheless, it's hard not to wonder whether letting a young man show his worth, his bravery, on the world's greatest athletic stage wouldn't inspire more ordinary people, and better reflect the ethos of true sportsmanship, than all the fair contests in the world
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