As all rugby eyes are on South Africa a quite remarkable South Africn is about to hit Scotland--its quite staggering to think that only three able bodied Scots have beaten his time of 46.25 for 400 metres--one of them being former GHK winger and GB international athlete Brian Whittle.In recent times Brian helped organise Hawks tours to Paris and Rome


Is he a Cheetah? No, Oscar Pistorius is the Blade Runner
DOUG GILLON, Athletics Correspondent June 17 2009
Most sports people must deal with adversity. Some conquer it gloriously, and others perversely even seem to grasp it, like some bucking divining wand that will help them discover success.

And then there is Oscar Pistorius.

To the uninitiated "T44" seems inoccuous shorthand. To some it may suggest a World War II Soviet tank, to others a US military training aircraft, but in sport, T44 implies a slower and less certain mode of transport. It's the classification for a Paralympic amputee.Or in Oscar's case, a double amputee - strictly speaking T43, of whom there are so few that they and the T44s compete together.

The South African does so to compelling effect on his Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon fibre prostheses. His world records at 100, 200, and 400 metres are all faster than those of single amputees.

That confounds the perceived natural order and is (whisper it) irksome to single amputees, not to mention mainstream runners whom he beats. And some of whom still suggest (very quietly) that Oscar has an advantage. Namely because he is evenly balanced, and that his speed on these sprung limbs constitutes performance enhancement.

But we won't go there. Because Oscar, in one celebrated bout of adversity-vanquishing, confounded the might of the International Association of Athletics Federations who were rash enough to go there. They banned the Blade Runner and his Cheetahs. He challenged them in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and won. It gave him the right to compete in the Beijing Olympics. Unsurprisingly with the distraction of legal papers flying back and forth, Pistorius failed by less than three-quarters of a second to reach the 400m qualifying standard of 45.55.

Between his birth, with no fibulae (requiring amputation of both legs at the knee before his first birthday), and three individual Paralympic golds in Beijing (one more than Usain Bolt, whose third Olympic title was in the relay) conquering adversity has been a daily ritual and recurring theme for Pistorius.

Which is why competitors with two legs entered for the 200 metres at the Scottish championships at Pitreavie on Sunday had best be on the very top of their game.

Oscar will be there, and not just to sign autographs for the Disability Sport Scotland athletics squad to whom he's mentoring on Friday.

"Yes, I'm visiting them, then racing on Sunday," he said. "Cool" was how he reacted to the fact that his best time would have won this title every year bar one in the past six. And just three Scots: David Jenkins, Brian Whittle, and Ian Mackie have run faster than his 400m best, 46.25.

Pistorius played rugby, water polo, and tennis for his school, and the later two at provincial level and was a freestyle wrestler until sustaining a bad knee injury at rugby.

That was in 2004, when he tried athletics which he's revolutionised - only Paralympian to have won the 100, 200 and 400m.

"It will be my first mainstream 200m in two years," he says, hoping it will launch him to his first global able-bodied championships in Berlin. It will also give Scots a first chance to race the Blade Runner who also sees next year's Commonwealth Games as a stepping stone to London 2012.

The most recent adversity he had to face was a powerboat crash on the Vaal river. His boat hit a submerged jetty. Thrown through the visor, he was hauled from the water and though he walked to an ambulance, he collapsed, was airlifted to hospital, and put on life support.

"I lost a lot of blood and it was scary," he said yesterday, speaking from his training base in Italy. "I broke two ribs, my cheekbone, the orbit of my eye, my jaw, and my nose. The doctor warned me the ribs would take longest. It's more than three months. I still wake up feeling them, but it's better every day.

"I lost three weeks when I didn't train at all. I spent a lot of time getting back on my feet, but I probably had about two months' time off."

Despite that, he won the 100 and 400m at the BT Paralympic World Cup last month. Given the accident, it would be wrong to read much into his 400m time of 50.28.

"Bitterly disappointing," he said, "but a week later, in Spain, I ran 47.40, then 47.20 in Turin. I think I'm being a bit hard on myself. I like to start the season off strong as I can.

"Three guys in South Africa have run sub-46 already, so I'm not going to base all my season on qualifying for the World Champs in Berlin.The goal since I've begun is to run a personal best every year. I'm just really lucky to be back on the track as soon as I have been after that accident.

"So I think this year, qualifying for the Worlds is going to be a little more difficult. But we're still going to go for it. I'm still running faster at this stage than I was last year."

If he gets to Berlin will he feel like he's walking into the lion's den? "Not at all. After the court decision, the IAAF said they were more than happy to have me in future. So I think we've got all that behind us. I've competed in more able-bodied events than disabled ones.

"It's not as if they've done me a favour. We've proved the prosthetic legs don't provide an advantage. That's what I had to do."

This article was originally posted on 17-Jun-2009, 07:07 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 17-Jun-2009, 18:52.