By Kevin Liffey and Chris Wickham
LONDON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – South African “blade runner”
Oscar Pistorius has unleashed a debate about disabled sport with
an emotional claim that a rival in the T44 200 metres final at
the London Paralympics beat him thanks to longer prosthetic
legs.
Pistorius had not been beaten over 200m for nine years, but
the result of Sunday’s final was less of a shock than the
post-race outburst of a man who is the face of disabled sport
partly thanks to his dignified campaign to be allowed to
challenge able-bodied runners at the Olympics.
“The size of some of the other guys’ legs are unbelievably
long,” Pistorius told Britain’s Channel 4 television.
“We’re not racing a fair race. The International Paralympic
Committee (IPC) have the regulations, but the regulations allow
the athletes to make themselves unbelievably high.”
Besides detracting from the victory of Brazil’s Alan
Oliveira, it was a surprising rant from a man who had convinced
sports administrators that his own carbon-fibre blades gave him
no advantage over able-bodied runners.
So can Paralympic medals be decided by the length of an
artificial leg? And where does that leave a branch of sport
striving to be taken as seriously as able-bodied sport?
SLIPPERY SLOPE
Continued…
