Oscar has to do it all over again

The Blade Runner, Oscar Pistorius, walked off with the 2012 Laureus World Sportsperson of the year with a disability award last week but its back to the drawing board for this young global icon. He will have to record a qualifying time in the 400 metres for a second time in a year to book his ticket for the London Olympic Games in July and August.

The qualification criteria proposed by Athletics South Africa (ASA) are tough, and if endorsed by the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC), Pistorius will have to beat the A-qualifying time of 45.25 seconds in the 400m.

ASA president James Evans said at least one time would have to be set after March 19, when the local track and field season gets into full swing. Qualifying performances set at the World Championships in South Korea in August and September last year would be accepted, but nothing earlier.

Pistorius clocked 45.07s to get to the World Championships earlier in July 2011.

Evans told The Times Pistorius, having beaten the mark once already, can do so again.

"He would have to go backwards not to achieve that time again."

Pistorius competed in the first round and semi-finals of the 400m at the World Championships, running times of 45.39s and 46.19s.

So far, only five South African athletes have achieved qualifying criteria – all at the World Champs: LJ van Zyl and Cornel Fredericks (both 400m hurdles); Caster Semenya (women's 800m); SunetteViljoen (women's javelin); and Ruben Ramolefi (3000m steeplechase).

Evans stressed that even these five would have to repeat their A-qualifying efforts after March 19. Anyone failing to do so would not be considered for London.

Pistorius won his world championship silver as a member of the 4x400m relay team, which is likely to qualify as long as South Africa's time at the World Championships remains inside the world's top eight.

SASCOC vowed to impose stringent selection criteria on Games hopefuls after the  Beijing games in 2008 where South Africa's biggest team in history returned with one medal – its lowest tally in 100 years.

Pistorius has millions of supporters globally, and Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Olympic Games organizing committee, acknowledged his impact on the Olympic and Paralympic sport recently.

"Oscar Pistorius is an extraordinary character," Coe said in an interview with Laureus. "I only realized the impact that Oscar has made on Olympic and Paralympic sport when I witnessed him in Trafalgar Square during the course of the summer.

"We celebrated International Paralympic Day in London and when Oscar gave his demonstration on a 60-metre stretch of tartan, in front of the National Gallery there were kids of all ages lining up wanting his autograph, pressing their noses to the barriers to get a glimpse of him. I suddenly realized this is a guy that really has made a massive impact in international sport." (Source: www.supersport.com, 9^th February 2012).

Eric Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb Mount Everest, wrote in an essay on Wikipedia that Pistorius was "on the cusp of a paradigm shift in which disability becomes ability, disadvantage becomes advantage. Yet we mustn't lose sight of what makes an athlete great. It's too easy to credit Pistorius' success to technology.

“Through birth or circumstance, some are given certain gifts, but it's what one does with those gifts, the hours devoted to training, the desire to be the best, that is at the true heart of a champion."

In his autobiography, Blade Runner, Pistorius revealed how, as a seventeen month old baby, he received his first prosthetics. From that moment on, he became invincible, he said.

“My energy was boundless, and I saw no reason why my new legs would not be able to take me everywhere I needed or wanted to go,” he added.

He was born without a fibula, a bone stretching from the ankle to the knee which supports the full weight of the body. Yet, in spite of these setbacks Pistorious went on to become the first amputee to win a track medal in the non-disabled World Championships – a silver in the 4x400 metres relay.

SASCOC president Gideon Sam, in congratulating Pistorius for winning the 2012 Laureus-award, said: "He is not only a Paralympics legend already, not only a fine ambassador for South Africa, but also a role-model to both athletes with disabilities as well as able-bodied athletes.

Oscar will be looking to represent South Africa in the Paralympic Games to defend his T44 100 metres, 200 metres and 400 metres titles.

But will he be able to represent South Africa in the Olympic Games in London as well? Oscar competed across a number of able-bodied races in the summer of 2011 and posted three times under 46 seconds, but it was in Lignano, Italy, on 19th July that Oscar set a personal best of 45.07s in the 400m, attaining the World Championships and Olympic Games 'A' standard qualification mark.

Repeating that feat will require enormous self-discipline, iron will and determination.

South African able-bodied athletes will be denied his inspirational presence if he does not qualify.

But don’t discard him. It is fairly significant that his mantra is: “You are not disabled by the disabilities you have. You are able by the abilities you have.”