‘Blade Runner’ gets the star treatment
On the electronic screens inside the main press centre, daily news briefings are usually attached to the name of the country holding the briefing. On Wednesday morning the Olympic committees from Australia and New Zealand had news conferences listed on the schedule, followed by Britain, Canada and Spain later in the day.
When the United States men’s basketball team held its news conference, for example, the big screens did not name Kobe Bryant or LeBron James. Swiss tennis star Roger Federer received special billing for his pretournament availability, but the individual marquee is a rarity, despite the star power involved.
And so it was that, on Wednesday, tucked between New Zealand and Britain was another rare singularity: Oscar Pistorius.
The South African is set to compete in the men’s 400-metre heats on Saturday.
And he will do it with prosthetic legs.
His story has become familiar around the world. Born without fibulas in either leg — one of the bones that runs below the knee to the foot — he had his lower legs amputated as a young child, and learned to walk with prosthetics.
Now, at 25, he is at the London Olympics, where he will become the first double amputee to compete at the Summer Games.
“I grew up not really thinking I had a disability,” he told a room filled with journalists. “I just grew up thinking I had different shoes.”
Photographs of his running prosthetics have also become famous around the world, the J-shaped carbon fibre blades with track spikes on the bottom. Studies have been undertaken to determine if the blades provide an unfair advantage on the track, leading to a debate on the moral and ethical consequences of having him compete at the Olympics.
“If the (prosthetics) don’t have the same biomechan-ics as a human leg, and if they aren’t simulating exactly how the other fullbodied runners have to run, then are we even doing the same contest here?” Angela Schneider, a former Olympic rower now working as a sports ethicist at the University of Western Ontario, told the National Post recently.
“(Mr. Pistorius) is running a different race. And it is really hard for people to stand up and say it isn’t fair to let him run, because, ‘Poor Oscar, look at him, born this way, and he has overcome incredible obstacles, and yet here he is at the Olympics, and he just wants to be able to compete.’”
He faced several versions of that argument on Wednesday, and faced all of them with a level, reasoned response. His prosthetics, called Flex-Foot Cheetahs, have been available to athletes for 16 years: “And there was never an athlete to run close to the times I was running in the 400.”
“You have to look at the net advantage or a net disadvantage,” he said. “I’ve heard people saying I don’t have lower limbs, therefore I’ve got less weight. But there is also blood in those limbs, so I’ve got less blood. I don’t have the tendons running from my foot to my ankles to my knee.”
His best time of the year so far, 45.52 seconds, is about a second behind the best time of the year, posted by American LaShawn Merritt (44.12).
Pistorius did not meet South Africa’s qualifying standard in the 400-metre, but received a spot on the team from the country’s Olympic committee. He will be able to run the 400-metres and the 4x400-metre relay in London.
He said he is aiming to qualify for the semifinal in his individual race, and that he would probably be able to help the relay team most if he ran the second or third leg. Those work better for him, he said, because the prosthetics make him a slower starter out of the blocks — it would help the team more if he had a running start.
Pistorius said they had not discussed which leg he would run for South Africa, but he has been cleared to run any of the four.
Pistorius spoke for 45 minutes, answering every question with poise — even when he was asked about his alleged romance with a Russian supermodel. (He said those reports were untrue.)
Do his teammates ever ask him about his prosthetics?
“They’re relaxed about it,” he said. “There’s so much dust kicked up about it … but I think they see me as just another guy.”
And what about his nickname, “The Blade Runner?”
“I don’t mind it,” he said with a smile. “It’s not one I’d choose, but it’s OK.”
In the end, as he got up to leave the stage, he was greeted with an unexpected round of applause from some in the room. He walked offstage in his snowwhite track suit, long pants covering his prosthetics, looking like any other elite athlete.