The Blade Runner

So. There’s this guy from South Africa – a sprinter, a 400m specialist – and during a meet in Italy on Tuesday, he ran under the A qualifying standard for the World Track and Field Championships. No big deal, right? Well, actually, it is a big deal – this guy, Oscar Pistorius, is a double amputee – and he didn’t just run the qualifying standard for a para-athlete; he ran the able-bodied standard. As long as three other South Africans don’t run faster in the next few weeks, he will become the first amputee to compete in an able-bodied world championships when he bursts out of the blocks in Daegu, South Korea in August.

This is huge.

Pistorius is known affectionately as The Blade Runner because he runs on carbon-fiber blades. That’s right – you read that right – he runs on blades. His two amputations were his legs below the knees. He was born without shins, so they had to amputate. But the amputations didn’t stop his inner athlete from manifesting. He worked to become the fastest amputee sprinter ever – he owns the world records for the 100, 200, and 400m.

But that wasn’t enough. He wanted to compete against able-bodied athletes at the highest level – he wanted to run in the 2008 Olympics. But guess what – the IAAF wouldn’t let him – they said the blades he runs on – the blades he runs on instead of legs – gave him an unfair advantage. Advantage? I’m sure that’s not a word Pistorius has had applied to him much – but there it was. To be fair, there is some merit to the fact that his blades return more energy per stride than a normal leg – but, really, unfair advantage? Needless to say, he fought the ruling – and won. But during the long fight for the right to qualify, he lost training time, and he failed to meet the qualifying standard.

Since then, he’s been chasing a 45.25, but the closest he could get was 45.61. On Tuesday night, things changed: he front ran the 400 at a small meet in Lignano and managed to make a quantum leap to 45.07. Amazing. He did it without anyone pushing him – it was all guts and desire.

You can check out an article on his triumph on CBC.

I can hardly wait to see him run in the World Championships. I don’t know if he’ll get out of the heats, but it’s an astonishing accomplishment – an event not to be missed if you care at all about running and the human spirit.