IAAF busy trying to thwart Pistorius in his brave quest

TIPPING POINT:London 2012 could prove the high point for the heroic South African who has redefined sporting achievement

WHAT SORT of attitude allowed Oscar Pistorius, a young boy born without the bones below his knees, believe that one day he may run in the Olympic Games? Where did he learn the blue sky thinking that permitted him not just to dream, but to act and then fulfil such outrageous ambitions.

After his parents were forced to make the agonising decision to amputate both legs when he was born without fibulas, what right had he to believe that London 2012 would become the stage for one of the greatest achievements in sport?

Pistorius is the pin-up boy from South Africa, who has redefined achievement. He is the Blade Runner, who ran the 15th fastest time in the world this year over 400 metres last Wednesday night in Italy. He is the fastest man with no legs.

Running the lap in 45.07 seconds, Pistorius met the qualifying standard for this year’s World Championships in Korea and next year’s London Games. He is now in unchartered territory and the first amputee sprinter in Olympic history. The time the South African ran would have earned him fifth place in the 2008 Olympic finals in Beijing.

Pistorius may come up against Ireland’s David Gillick, if the Irishman achieves the qualifying times to run in London and, who knows, maybe Jason Smyth too if both the visually impaired Derry athlete and Pistorius make the 200 metre qualifying standards. Smyth is the Paralympic 100 metre and 200 metre champion in his category, Pistorius that and more in his. Both have moved to able-bodied events.

Smyth made history as the first Paralympian to compete at a European Championships last year, where he qualified for the semi-finals of the 100 metres in 10.43 seconds. The best time Pistorius ran for the event is 10.91 seconds. Smyth can do the 200 metres in 21.43 seconds, Pistorius in 21.58 seconds.

This year Pistorius finished sixth in the 400-meters at the Ostrava Golden Spike meet in May with a time of 46.19 against a field of able-bodied athletes. In July he ran over a second faster, 45.07 seconds, in Lignano, thus qualifying for the World Championships and the London Olympics. Gillick’s Irish record for the distance is 44.77 seconds.

Unlike the others, Pistorius has had to fight a long-running legal battle with the IAAF governing body over the use of his carbon fibre Cheetah Blades that officials said improved his speed and gave him an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes.

From the age of 11 months, when his legs were amputated, he has known nothing other than prosthetics. He has been the subject of major criticism, some of it hysterical and some warranted, around claims that his artificial limbs give him an unfair advantage over runners with natural ankles and feet.

He runs with J-shaped carbon-fibre prosthetics called the “Cheetah Flex-Foot” manufactured by Icelandic company Ossur. Some athletes and officials allege that the ‘blades’ he uses are longer than is necessary, allowing him to cover more ground in each stride. They said that the Cheetahs return more energy than legs do, that they don’t become fatigued or require the same investment of energy, that they are not subject to metabolite or lactic acid build-up that slows down other athletes.

Pistorius countered with disadvantages he faces, such as rain, which makes traction hard to attain, wind that blows him sideways and how he needs more energy to start running.

In 2007, the IAAF amended its competition rules to include a ban on the use of “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”. It disingenuously claimed that the amendment was not specifically aimed at Pistorius.

But they monitored his track performances using high-definition cameras to film his race against Italian club runners in Rome and in Sheffield later that year. In the Rome analysis the IAAF revealed what they called an unusual ‘pacing strategy’ explained by the advantage given by the Cheetah prosthetics.

Later in 2007, professor Gert-Peter Brüggemann began testing the artificial limbs for the IAAF. He found that Pistorius’s limbs used 25 per cent less energy than able-bodied runners to run at the same speed, as well as 30 per cent less mechanical work for lifting the body. Brüggemann concluded that Pistorius had considerable advantages.

Based on those findings, the IAAF ruled Pistoriuss prostheses ineligible for use in competitions, including the Beijing Olympics in 2008. He appealed against the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and appeared before the tribunal at the end of April 2008.

The CAS reversed the IAAF’s ban and held that there was insufficient evidence to claim that Pistorius’s prosthetics provided any metabolic advantage over other runners.

Pistorius needs to run the ‘A’ qualifying time twice more to meet South Africa’s automatic selection criteria for the Olympics. Officials have said he will be treated like any other athlete. But his place in London will continue to spark enmity and disagreement.

How would people react if the disabled were seen as more perfectly efficient than the able-bodied athletes? A former rugby and water polo player, the 24-year-old hits one of the nerves that few people are comfortable discussing, the Olympic idea of purity.

Among ethicists, the Pistorius success has spurred debate on “transhumans” and “cyborgs” and some point out that athletes have already modified themselves in a number of ways, including baseball players and golfers, like Pádraig Harrington, who have undergone laser eye surgery to enhance their vision and improve performance.

Baseball pitchers have also had elbow reconstruction using sturdier ligaments from elsewhere in the body to replace the damaged ones in their arms. Distance runners chemically alter their blood by sleeping in oxygen tents, again to perform better. All is permitted.

Given many athletes have taken dangerous performance-enhancing drugs to increase their chances of winning Olympic medals, some feel technological advantages may cause athletes to have their healthy natural limbs replaced by artificial ones! Self-mutilation for Olympic gold seems extreme until you remember the contempt East Germany had for their athletes in the Soviet Bloc days.

Blurred lines freak officials. But what the IAAF have been engaged in since Pistorius emerged as a real threat to their ideal is denying him basic rights and contributing negatively to one man’s struggle against the odds – a fundamental principle of the Olympic movement.