Oscar Pistorius, Double-Amputee Sprinter, Reaches 400 Semifinals At World Championships (VIDEO)
DAEGU, South Korea — With a strong finishing kick on his carbon-fiber blades, double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius swept past several able-bodied runners in the 400 meters Sunday to qualify for the semifinals at the world championships.
It also claimed another historic breakthrough for Paralympic athletes.
Pistorius recovered from his traditional slow start to pounce with power through the final bend and finishing straight to take third place in the final heat of the event and qualify for the next round. His time of 45.39 seconds was the 14th best of all competitors.
Despite his fame, the South African was never destined to win his heat – just getting through had been a cliffhanger in itself.
Running in the tough outside lane, he had to count on a big move in the second half of the race and with 50 meters to go, five runners were still in it for the four automatic semifinal places.
Pistorius, though, was not to be denied. He dipped at the tape for his third-place finish behind Bahamian winner Chris Brown. He immediately slapped hands with runner-up Martyn Rooney, embraced several others and then formally bowed to the South Korean crowd of about 10,000 for its cheers and support.
"He ran the time to get here," said Olympic champion LaShawn Merritt, who also advanced. "A great heart. I wish all the best to him."
The International Association of Athletics Federations had banned the multiple Paralympic gold medalist from able-bodied competition, saying the blades he wears gave him an unfair advantage.
But in 2008, Pistorius was cleared to compete by the Court of Arbitration for Sport – even though he failed to qualify for that year's Beijing Olympics and the 2009 worlds in Berlin. He did win three gold medals at the Beijing Paralympic Games.
This year, he qualified for the worlds on his last attempt and followed up with an inspiring race in Daegu.
Before Pistorius' thrilling run, Liu Xiang, Dayron Robles and David Oliver made sure the most compelling final was still on track when all three qualified for the semifinals of the 110 hurdles.
Liu proved he is finally getting back to the form which earned him the 2004 Olympic and 2007 world titles by having plenty of time to ease up at the line and still win his heat. Oliver kept his powerful shoulders in perfect balance over the hurdles as he dashed through a winner, too.
Robles, the easygoing Olympic champion from Cuba who flaunted his form with his graceful strides over the 10 hurdles, let American rival Aries Merritt nip him at the line.
"Everybody is looking good," Robles said. "It's very good for the final."
The final is set for Sunday and should bring the three fastest performers in history together for one of the highlights of the nine-day championships.
"It will take 13 seconds or better to win," Liu said through a translator.
Robles holds the world record at 12.87 seconds, with Liu's best time just 0.01 seconds behind. Oliver trails by another .01, highlighting how tight the race could be.
Defending champion Ryan Brathwaite failed to make the semifinals.
In the first of six finals of the day, Olympic and defending world champion Valeriy Borchin led a 1-2 Russian finish in the 20-kilometer walk at 1:19.56. Vladimir Kanaykin took silver, 31 seconds behind, and Luis Fernando Lopez of Colombia was third.
"After 15 kilometers, I was just going into my finish speed and not thinking about anything," Borchin said. "I was not looking at anyone, just running my race. It ended well."
Later Sunday, Usain Bolt will highlight the 100 semifinals and likely the final, too, considering how dominating the Jamaican was in Saturday's heats.
Kenenisa Bekele will be looking for his fifth straight 10,000 title, which would push him past the mark he now shares with Ethiopian great Haile Gebrselassie. Since he has not run for the better part of two seasons because of injury, victory is anything but assured.
The men's decathlon also reaches its climax, with American teammates Trey Hardee and Ashton Eaton at the top of the standings after seven of 10 events.
The women's long jump and discus throw are the other finals on Sunday.
Source: The Huffington Post
Blade runner: sporting hero or cheat?
August 29, 2011
'Blade runner' Oscar Pistorius finishes third in his first appearance at a major championship.
Oscar Pistorius, the athlete known as Blade Runner, made his debut in a major championship. Ian Chadband reports on a breakthrough moment in sport and the controversy that continues to rage over his eligibility.
A momentous event in sporting endeavour, perhaps even in human endeavour, took place in front of 10,000 enthralled spectators at the Daegu Stadium in Korea on Sunday. A man who had his lower legs amputated as a baby ran against some of the best 400-metre sprinters in the World Championships, athletics' greatest event. And beat most of them.
Oscar Pistorius, a 24 year-old from Johannesburg, modestly shrugged that he was just another runner, just the same as thousands of others around the world, just like those hard-working sprinters alongside him who had sacrificed so much to reach their sport's pinnacle.
Except that it did not wash. Korean fans hung over the side of the track just to get close to the man running on the prosthetic limbs, the first double amputee to compete in the championships, because they could recognise this was an extraordinary breakthrough moment in sport. They looked and were amazed. "We love you Oscar!" came the chants, because they could hardly conceive that this figure, balanced seemingly precariously on his carbon-fibre blades, could possibly compete with able-bodied runners on level terms.
But he could. And it was breathtaking to behold. In this job, I have been privileged to witness great sporting feats at close quarters for a quarter of a century and, frankly, the major championship debut of this young South African was as uplifting an occasion as anything I've seen.
OK, Pistorius did not actually win his race. He finished third in his heat, covering one lap in just 45.39 seconds, which booked him a place in today's semi-finals. Even he conceded that he was unlikely to go any further in the competition, but yesterday morning, it felt as if it did not matter; the only thing that did was that we had just watched, awe-struck, as a line between a supposedly able-bodied and a supposedly disabled athlete suddenly became so invisible as to feel quite irrelevant.
That is just as Pistorius would want it. Just another athlete? No, he looked like one in a million. "I don't really feel like a trailblazer or anything like that, to be honest," he told me. "I feel like any other athlete here. Each person works extremely hard to do what they do. I'm not the only athlete here, there are thousands of them. So I don't really feel like a pioneer. Just a runner."
Only he can never be just that. Apart from Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, who lost his 100 metres crown after being disqualified for a false start, Pistorius has been the most feted athlete at the competition because in a sense he is also the most important athlete.
A year from today, the Paralympic Games begin in London. Pistorius is desperate to compete there, but it is also his dream to compete in the Olympic Games that take place a month earlier. He will probably end up taking part in both, which one would imagine ought to be a reason for universal delight.
Except that while it is, of course, impossible for anyone not to salute the achievements of a man whose amazing determination has seen him break these barriers, the rumbling undercurrent to his shining success here is that there are many who, frankly, would rather he did not compete against able-bodied athletes at all. They see Pistorius not so much as a hero but a nuisance, an inconvenience, a menace. He has even been called a cheat in his time, but no one would dare do that to his face.
The doubters come in various guises. There are some of the grandees of Paralympic sport, including Britain's greatest, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, who feel that should he run the 400m at the Olympics, he will effectively turn the Paralympic event into a "B" race and undermine the movement.
Then there are those able-bodied athletes he runs against who cannot abide the idea of being beaten by a man shooting around on specially designed blades, which they are convinced are providing him with an unfair advantage. As Martyn Rooney, his British friend and rival, put it here: "The ones who complain about Oscar are the ones getting beaten by him."
They are probably also the ones who fancy that, though Pistorius has actually run on the same Cheetah blades for seven years, he must somehow be taking advantage of constant improvements in prosthetic limb technology, which would account for the vast improvement of more than half a second in his time for the 400m this season. Pistorius, though, is an eloquent defender of his own work ethic. It is the man not the machinery, he protests.
This scientific debate is at the heart of the fear that drove athletics' governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), to first ban Pistorius from their competitions in 2008. The IAAF are convinced that, although he is still running times which as yet do not make him a medal threat in major events, there will come a time soon when prosthetics technology is so advanced that "disabled" runners will be swifter than the Michael Johnsons of this world. Indeed, Hugh Herr, the scientist who has contributed to Pistorius's achievement, believes that disabled people will soon be smashing world records set by able-bodied sportsmen and women. It was Herr, head of biomechanotronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and himself a double amputee, who persuaded the IAAF to reverse its ban, allowing Pistorius to compete alongside able-bodied athletes.
That decision remains controversial, and clouded by a plethora of polarised scientific views, none of which can yet be definitively proved. One critic maintains that because the blades are so much lighter than legs, Pistorius uses less energy running at the same speed as able-bodied athletes, nor do his blades tire as the lower limbs of an able-bodied athlete do during a race. Another professor counters that the blades are a disadvantage, because Pistorius cannot push off and accelerate from the blocks as the able-bodied do, and that his fatigue levels are the same as for those supposedly drowning in lactic acid on the home straight.
In truth, nobody truly knows. What seemed evident was that Pistorius does run the 400m in a different fashion to most quarter-milers, poor at the start but coming into his own from around the penultimate bend when others are flailing.
Even if some of his rivals harbour private concerns about the future of their event - and LaShawn Merritt, the reigning world champion, sounded dubious after winning his heat yesterday, shrugging: "I don't know what's going to happen with the technology" - Rooney reckons it was time that everyone embraced Pistorius. "I think it's essential for him to be there. He's a massive thing for athletics, for sport; he's a selling point, a role model for kids with disabilities and such a positive person to be around."
Indeed. How could you not be a fan of Oscar Pistorius? Watching him evaporates cynicism. He will not win Olympic gold but he will win hearts, make spirits soar. The last we saw of him yesterday, he seemed to be pulling off the remarkable trick of beaming and grimacing simultaneously as he conducted a series of post-race interviews which appeared to last about an hour longer than his race.
"I need to get out of here as quick as I can to have an ice bath and get ready for tomorrow," he protested. Not a chance. Just another word, Oscar! The world wanted to celebrate with a proper sporting hero.
The Telegraph, London
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