Is Oscar Pistorius, 'fastest man on no legs', fast enough for Olympics?

The South African has been an inspiration to many, but does he deserve to compete in the Olympics?

Pat Morgan / debutart.com

When Oscar Pistorius crouches down for the first heat of the men's 4x400 metres at the London Olympic Stadium on August 9, everything will be in place.
Sunglasses sponsorship by Oakley? Check. The face of Thierry Mugler fragrance? Check. Personal social networking sites including 48,000 follows on Twitter? Check. In short, everything that is expected of a world-class athlete in the early 21st century.
Pistorius lacks only that which, ironically, has made him one of the most recognisable names in sport. Sometimes he is "the fastest man on no legs", at others "the blade runner." Always, though, he is the centre of attention wherever he runs.
This week, the South African Athletics Association named Pistorius as the final member of its 400 metres relay team and then decided he could run in the individual event. There are two ways to look at this.
The first is to question his appearance at all. The runner was selected for London despite being nearly a quarter of a second slower than the time required by South Africa's Olympic guidelines.
True, his personal best of 45.07 seconds is an Olympic qualifying time, but measured against the world's best, Pistorius barely makes it into the current top 50 times. The world number one in the 400 metres, LaShawn Merritt of the United States, has run more than a quarter of a second faster. Michael Johnson's world record stands at 43.18 seconds.
In this rarefied world, Pistorius is an also-ran. His closest rival is Jonathan Borlée of Belgium, who finished fourth in the European Athletics Championships and who does not have a contract with a French fashion house.
On the other hand, to most people, Pistorius is an inspiration, a living, bounding example of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. You literally could not make his story up, which is presumably why Tom Hanks was said to be negotiating the film rights for his life story.
Born without fibulas, both his legs were amputated at the shins when he was 11 months old. Not content to shuffle around on artificial limbs, Pistorius instead pursued the impossible dream of being a champion on the track.
After strapping on carbon graphite prosthetics known as the "Cheetah", the young runner swept to gold in the 200 metres at the Athens Paralympics, then grabbed three more at Beijing, including the 100 metres, the crown jewel of sprinting. At the London Paralympics, he will defend all three titles.
But Pistorius does not want to be remembered as a disabled athlete. He even refuses to park in spaces marked "disabled." The word annoys him. He has a mantra: "You are not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have."
In the background, though, an issue constantly niggles. It is not that Pistorius is disabled, but rather that he is over-abled. Do his artificial legs actually make him run faster than he would on real limbs? Is he actually abled by the disabilities he has?
The question first arose five years ago, as Pistorius, then 20, began to emerge as a rising force on the track. Shortly after running his first international competitions, the International Association of Athletics Federations - the world governing body - amended its rule book to rule out: "any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides a user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device".
An unseemly spat followed. Pistorius accused the IAAF of behaving like "an FBI investigation" after secretly filming him at a race in Rome. In reply, the IAAF told the South African to "calm down" and "respect us". Rather bizarrely, the IAAF insisted that it had not banned Pistorius - just his legs.
An inconclusive scientific debate followed. Pistorius runs on the Flex-Foot Cheetah, a "J" of carbon graphite manufactured by an Icelandic company, Össur. The blades attach to the stumps of his legs and finish in a coating that resembles the sole of an athletics shoe. Because the Cheetah stores kinetic energy, it enables its wearer to run and jump.
In May 2008, the IAAF ruling was overturned after an appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared Pistorius to continue using the Cheetah. Some months later, a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology concluded that there was: "insufficient evidence to conclude that modern running-specific prostheses provide physiological or biomechanical advantages over biological legs."
A minority report, by two American scientists, claimed that the blades gave Pistorius a 10-second advantage over 400 metres, and that "the blades enhance sprint running speeds by 15 to 30 per cent."
Measured against the other hurdles that Pistorius has cleared, his victory over the IAAF was just another challenge. He has been confronted with them all his life. Born in a suburb of Johannesburg to parents of Italian ancestry, they were told that Oscar's deformity meant he would never walk, and followed medical advice to have the lower part of his limbs amputated.
At 6 years old, his parents, Henke, a businessman, and Sheila, a school counsellor, divorced, leaving young Oscar in the custody of his mother. Her untimely death when he was 15 left him devastated. He has the date of her passing tattooed on his arm.
Looking back on his childhood, relatives recall a child "with no perception of danger" who once jumped into the swimming pool in his artificial legs, instantly sinking to the bottom under their weight.
"He used to roller skate, ride bicycles, climb trees. He ran everywhere - and he ran like the wind," says his aunt, Diana Binge.
At 13, he was sent to board at the prestigious Pretoria Boys High School, recalling in an interview with the London Independent newspaper how he told his dorm mates on the first night: "I don't want special treatment. I deal with my disability with humour and I'd appreciate it if you could do the same."
The response was to hide Pistorius' prosthetics and then set fire to his bed frame with lighter fluid.
"I thought I was going to die," he recalled. "Then the guys came back in laughing. It was a great practical joke."
It was one of the few times Pistorius was made aware of his disability. At home "it was never made an issue", he said in the same interview. "My mother would say to my brother, 'You put on your shoes, and Oscar, you put on your legs, then meet me at the car'. Nobody ever pitied me to the point that I questioned why. I won my first sporting trophy when I was 6, for Greco-Roman wrestling. At 9 I took up boxing. At school I played tennis, rugby and cricket. I played water polo to provincial standard."
A rugby accident in which he shattered a knee forced him to give up the sport in 2004. Instead, the 17-year-old took up athletics, running the school 100 metres in 11.72 seconds. When his father looked up the time, he discovered his son had broken the Paralympic record.
Six months after beginning serious athletics, Pistorius won gold in Athens. It was said that his personal trainer did not realise at first that he was working with a man with no legs because in the early months he worked out in track suit bottoms.
His goal has always been to compete against able-bodied athletes. In 2007 he finished second at an international meet in Rome, then seventh in a world-class field at the British Grand Prix.
After winning his IAAF appeal, Pistorius was picked for the South African relay team at the 2011 World Athletics Championships in South Korea, winning a silver medal, although only taking part in the heats. Then came his selection for London; the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics.
Yet he will not be the first disabled person to compete at the Games. Neroli Fairhall, a paraplegic from New Zealand, took part in the archery at Los Angeles in 1984, while Marla Runyan, legally blind, ran in the 1,500 metres in Sydney.
And if Pistorius does overcome the odds and mount the winner's podium next month, he will find he was beaten by George Eyser, who won a gymnastics vaulting gold for the US in 1904 despite having a wooden leg.
It can safely be assumed, though, that Eyser did not have a deal to promote aftershave.
[e-mail]