Oscar Pistorius has broken records in the paralympics, and has now set his sights on able-bodied games. He is one good race away from qualifying for the Olympic 400m, despite the minor inconvenience of having no legs. After being described as an “inconvenient embarrassment” by the BBC the other day, the guy has every right to be a little angry at people. But there are three things about this whole deal that I feel need to be sorted out, fast:
- First of all, if people are not sure if the guy’s artificial legs give him an advantage, then I think we need to give him the benefit of the doubt. He trains and works hard like everybody else, and he deserves to be treated as such.
- Second of all, the IAAF only letting him run the first relay leg for safety reasons seems to ignore the fact that the rest of the athletes have inch-long spikes on the soles of their feet. If they can let Zola Budd run barefoot, they can let Blade Runner run wherever he wants.
- Third of all, Tanni Grey-Thompson, one of Britain’s greatest Paralympians, said that if Pistorius runs in the Olympic 400m, it will turn the Paralympic 400m into a ‘B event.’ That sounds to me like someone admitting that the Paralympics has no value other than as a filler for those who cannot enter the Olympics. However, I would argue that this does the opposite. It makes the Paralympic Games relevant to the Olympics themselves in a way that has never really happened before.
True, he is not the first amputee to qualify for the Olympics (Swimmer Natalie Du Toit, also of South Africa, for all you pub quiz fans), but he is the first one to really capture the attention of the general public. It amazes me that the first amputee athlete to qualify for the Olympic Games will be looked at as anything but an inspiration, and I hope that, eventually, common sense and human decency will prevail.
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