Oscar Pistorius is running against the clock and parts of the track and field establishment in his final attempt to qualify for the Beijing Olympics.
The double-amputee sprinter will compete in the 400m on Wednesday at Lucerne, Switzerland, knowing he must run the fastest time of his life to persuade South African selectors to include him in the Beijing team that they will announce the next day.
Pistorius also knows that at least one senior official from the sport’s governing body doesn’t want him at the Games.
”It’s a decision that rests with the officials of the federation and the South African Olympic committee, but we’d prefer that they don’t select him for reasons of safety,” said Pierre Weiss, general secretary of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), according to his spokesperson.
The IAAF barred Pistorius (21) from running against able-bodied athletes in January, arguing that his Cheetah prosthetic racing blades give him a competitive advantage.
Pistorius won his appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, leaving him only two months to make up for lost training time and earn an Olympic place.
While a qualifying standard of 45,55 seconds for the 400m seems out of reach, Pistorius hopes that beating his lifetime best of 46,36 in Lucerne could get him into the six-man squad for South Africa’s 1 600m relay.
But Weiss, an IAAF official for 23 years, said Pistorius risked the physical safety of himself and other athletes if he ran in the main pack of the relay event where only the first leg is run in lanes.
”It is a cautionary note,” IAAF spokesperson Nick Davies said on Tuesday. ”[The relay] is a scrum. It is one of the few events where there is physical contact between athletes. You are jostling, crouched down at the line waiting for the baton in a group lined up hip to hip.”
Davies said Pistorius could cause ”serious damage” if he ran in the relay.
”When you get the baton you fly straight to the inner curve, so there is a massive potential for disaster on changeovers,” he said.
Pistorius’s manager, Peet Van Zyl, declined to address the IAAF’s comments but said his client, who played rugby union before focusing on track four years ago, would likely be protected from the most physical aspects of an Olympic relay race.
”In discussions with our federation, the plan was always going to be for Oscar to run the first leg,” Van Zyl said in a statement.
Davies said the IAAF still had concerns over the CAS ruling, which cleared Pistorius to compete only if he used the same model of Cheetah blade that was subjected to laboratory testing.
”There is still a big issue over the prosthetics,” Davies said. ”We just don’t have the resources to check every time he is running what he is using. If Oscar runs 44,7 in Lucerne, we would be totally stupid not to do something because you shouldn’t improve by two seconds in two weeks.”
Pistorius clocked 46,62 at the Golden League meeting in Rome last Friday. ”I can still improve,” he said, acknowledging that the 2012 London Olympics might be a more realistic target.
Pistorius intends to run at the September 6 to 17 Paralympics in Beijing and is likely to skip able-bodied events for the rest of the season if his Lucerne race does not earn Olympic selection.
He was born without fibulas — the long, thin outer bone between the knee and ankle — and was 11 months old when his legs were amputated below the knee. — Sapa-AP