There hasn’t been a lot of news about Oscar Pistorius for a few years. Oscar is a double amputee that was banned by the IAAF for having an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes, and then allowed back into competition following a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The position that the CAS took was that the IAAF did not have any evidence that Pistorius had an advantage and had no grounds to ban him, although the researchers who made that statement later determined that he does have some advantages.
It was all a moot point, however, since Oscar wasn’t able to run fast enough to qualify to run at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
That may now change, though. On Tuesday night, Oscar cut over half a second off of his PR to run 400 meters 45.07 seconds in Lignano, Italy. This qualifies him to run at the world championships next month, as it falls under the 45.25 second qualifying standard.
If he can run that standard 2 more times before the 2012 London Olympic Games, then he’ll meet the South African Olympic Committee’s automatic selection criteria for who they’ll send to the Games.
“Now he knows he can do it, there’s no reason why he can’t keep on doing it,” Athletics South Africa chairman James Evans said. “The way we’ve treated Oscar has always been we are not going to do him any favors, and we are not going to hold anything against him. He will be treated like any other athlete.”
He’ll have a few more opportunities to reach the “A” standard over the next few weeks, with plans to run in Budapest, Hungary on July 31 and at the Diamond League Crystal Palace meet in London at the beginning of August.
More Info: The Sacramento Bee
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