South Africa's Oscar Pistorius competes in the 400 metres on May 31, 2011 at the Zlata Tretra (Golden Spike) athletics meeting in the eastern Czech city of Ostrava. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty ImagesOscar Pistorius rose slowly from the starting blocks, like a middle-aged man with a dodgy back getting out of an armchair. As the athletes rounded the first bend in the 400m event at Lignano in Italy earlier this month, he was last. But down the back straight his powerful arms began to pump, his legs appeared to slice through the air and he maintained his speed through the final bend. Now he was leading the race and bombing down the finishing straight. He crossed the line and sneaked a look at the clock – 45.04 seconds, eventually rounded up to 45.07 – before bear-hugging one of the other runners and falling to the track laughing.
Pistorius, 24, who is South African, had not broken the world record – he was almost two seconds off Michael Johnson's 1999 mark – but he achieved something almost as significant on that balmy evening of 19 July. He had passed the qualifying standard that will allow him, if selected by his country, to race alongside the best able-bodied athletes at next month's world championships and at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. And he didn't just scrape through. If he had run that time in the 400m final in Beijing in 2008, he would have finished fifth; he would have done even better at the 2009 world championships, placing fourth.
It had been coming, but no one expected it so soon. In January 2008, the International Association of Athletics Federations deemed that Pistorius – who was born without either fibula, the bone that runs from behind the knee to the ankle, and whose legs were amputated mid-calf when he was 11 months old – was ineligible to compete in its events, notably the Olympics. The concern was that his carbon-fibre prosthetics gave him a competitive advantage: made by the Icelandic company Ossur, the Flex-Foot Cheetah weighs approximately half of a typical sprinter's lower leg.
Pistorius appealed, more professors and biomechanists were engaged, and in May 2008 the Swiss-based court of arbitration for sport overturned the decision. The "Blade Runner" (alias "the fastest man on no legs") was free to compete in the Olympics after all. The only problem was that Pistorius was running mid-47 seconds for the 400m, a significant chunk of daylight behind the world's best. He consoled himself by winning three golds at the Paralympics (100m, 200m and 400m), all in record time.
So while Pistorius was rolling around deliriously on a track in Italy, everyone else had a couple of minutes to make up their minds on one of the most intractable ethical conundrums in recent sporting history. The reliably erudite Roger Black, our greatest 400m runner, was one of the first to speak out. No scientific consensus, he pointed out, had been reached on whether the blades provided Pistorius with a benefit and until that was clear we did not have the faintest idea whether he was "an amazing athlete or a very good athlete with an advantage". Black also placed himself in the spikes of an athlete beaten – maybe even to a medal – by Pistorius. Would they think, perhaps even justifiably, that it was unfair?
There was concern, too, from the Paralympic community. Pistorius has always contended that he would like to compete at both the Olympics and the Paralympics, but some viewed the actions of the world's most famous disabled athlete as a defection. Tanni Grey-Thompson, who won 11 gold medals at five Paralympics, had already made her position clear. "I just don't think it is about whether he has an advantage or disadvantage; he's just too different," she said. "I can see why he wants to go to the Olympics, for the competition, fame and the money, but I'd like to see him get that at the Paralympics and I think London will be able to deliver that."
I put Black's concern to Great Britain's current king of the quarter-mile, Martyn Rooney, who finished sixth in the 400m final in Beijing. How would he feel if he were beaten by Pistorius in London? "I wouldn't be too bothered," he says. "I'd be a lot angrier if, say, someone who had failed a drugs test beat me. Oscar has not gone out of his way to cheat. This is his situation: he needs to run with those blades. He can modify things in ways that we can't, but there's things we can do that he can't, so it balances out quite well. The athletes who complain are the ones who aren't running fast enough."
Ade Adepitan, who competed in wheelchair basketball and now presents Channel 4's That Paralympic Show, has more conflicted views, but feels that Pistorius could be a radical role model for disabled athletes. "If he gets into the final it's going to send shock waves round the world, and if he wins a medal, wow," he says, with a mischievous laugh. "Picture a double-leg amputee on the podium at the Olympics. What doors would it open up? What implications does it have? None of us will know until it happens, but that's the great thing about what Oscar is doing: he's asking questions."
What everyone does agree on is that you would be hard pushed to find a nicer guy or better ambassador for his sport. Pistorius is known for telling children that his legs were bitten off by a big shark, or that they fell off because he didn't eat his greens – depending on whether their parents are around – and he believes it is his responsibility to educate people positively about disability. He is heavily involved in the Mineseeker Foundation, which supplies prosthetic limbs to the victims of landmines in Mozambique.
Pistorius was born in 1986 in Johannesburg to Sheila and Henke, who works in dolomite mining. After the amputation, Oscar was given a set of fibreglass legs and within six months he was taking his first faltering steps. He was a natural sportsman, playing rugby, tennis and water polo to a high level, but life away from games was less happy. His parents split when he was six and, when he was 15, his mother, to whom he was particularly close, died. He only started running in 2004, aged 17, but within a few months, using a set of prosthetics from Ossur, he was narrowly defeated in the 100m and won the 200m at the Athens Paralympics.
His progress has never been exactly straightforward though. There remains considerable scientific doubt over whether his crescent-shaped legs give him an unfair advantage; one report, in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2009, claimed that the Cheetahs might provide him with as much as a 10-second boost over 400m. The legs have also caused him to be detained and handcuffed at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam in 2008, when police suspected him of being a terrorist. Worst of all, he was involved in a boat accident on the Vaal river in South Africa in 2009 that left him with a broken jaw, crushed cheekbone and 170 stitches patching his face together.
It was this last incident, however, that may be responsible for Pistorius's recent dramatic upturn in form. Having been convinced he was going to die, he now decided to lose weight, spend less time on his Yamaha superbike and not be "that crazy kid I was when I was growing up" (though he has kept the pair of pet white tigers named after underworld gods). He focused more than ever on his preparation. "I train harder than other guys, eat better, sleep better and wake up thinking about athletics," he has said. "That's probably why I'm a bit of an exception."
Rooney, who has raced and beaten Pistorius twice, most recently this month, agrees that there has been a dramatic change. "I was taking the mick out of him the other day. A picture came up on his computer from Beijing and I said, 'You were a fat git back then'," Rooney says. "He was a big lad, he didn't look like an athlete and that's when people got annoyed with the blades because they just saw this fat guy who was running fast. But now he's lean, he's built like an athlete. He's come a long way and he's coming to his peak."
Last week a billboard went up in Times Square, New York. It is for a new fragrance called A*Men from Thierry Mugler and shows a kind of Robo-Pistorius, his blades cast in chrome, looking like a superhero running to answer an emergency call – obviously someone needs a quick slap of aftershave, fast. The tagline reads: "A modern hero, an exceptional athlete."
It is hard to argue with either of those statements. Whatever you think about the ethics of Pistorius racing against able-bodied athletes, it sends out a stunning message of hope for people with disabilities.
"If you asked any sporting expert 15 years ago if Paralympians would be competing against Olympians, they would have laughed you out of the room," says Adepitan. "Oscar is inspiring amputees all over the world to say: 'Look, you can compete on an even level with anyone if you work hard enough.' And, for any sports fan, it's something you would want to see."
Blind from birth, the US swimmer is the most decorated Paralympic athlete, with 55 medals, 41 of which are gold.
Britain's most successful female Paralympian has won 16 medals from five Paralympics, including 11 golds.
Started swimming as therapy in 1971 and by 1976 was at the Toronto Paralympics, winning three gold medals. Won another 13 golds, making him UK's most successful Paralympic athlete.
Swedish shooter won 16th gold in Beijing. Currently competing for a quota place in London 2012 Olympics.
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