Oscar Pistorius is trying to qualify for the Olympics(what game/event?). His major obstacle: he has no legs.
Although he has not yet qualified individually, he is closing in on the mark and has 15 months left to shave off tenths of seconds (from what event?). He finished second in the South African National Championship 400-meter dash. Should South Africa qualify a relay team for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Pistorius would presumably be on it.
What currently prevents Pistorius from competing is his artificial limbs. According to Olympic rules, a foot must be in contact with the starting block, and it is unclear whether the rule will be expanded to include a prosthetic extremity. Furthermore, the Olympic Committee is worried about the fairness of Pistorius’s high-tech contraptions. Because the runner’s legs were amputated below the knee at birth, it is impossible to tell what his true height would have been. The prosthetic limbs may, in fact, give him an advantage in stride length and flexibility.
For Olympic officials, it is an exceedingly uncomfortable issue. Pistorius, however, has many supporters, including researchers who have found that while natural limbs return 240 percent of the energy absorbed in each stride, artificial ones return only 80 percent. The amputee sprinter therefore has to generate much more torque with his hips and needs twice the energy of the able-bodied sprinter just to remain upright.
There is no reason why he should not be allowed to compete, assuming he qualifies. His story is more Olympic in nature than those of most of his competitors. He trains harder, completing outrageously draining workouts (involving…) that test the strength and endurance of both his mind and body. Do his artificial legs give him an advantage? Maybe. Do the natural legs of sprinters give them an “unfair” advantage over Pistorius, who has never walked unaided? Perhaps.
But follow this reasoning to its natural conclusion: Pistorius should be allowed to compete because he works hard, has (presumably) met the qualifying time and promises an unbelievable story. What happens, then, when everyone who wants so desperately to be great does something drastic to achieve greatness? Should we condone sluggers who visit eye doctors to artificially enhance their eyesight? We already do. Should we sympathize with pitchers who, through Tommy John surgery, replace their relatively weak elbow ligaments with stronger ligaments from other parts of their bodies? We already do. Should we allow runners, jumpers, batters, pitchers, football players, athletes of all kinds to take performance- enhancing drugs? This, society shuns.
Why is Pistorius’s story so different from that of Floyd Landis, Barry Bonds or Justin Gatlin? Why does the public immediately embrace Pistorius, while instinctively turning the cold shoulder on accused steroid abusers?
In a way, it’s hypocritical. It is hard to determine whether hypocrisy lies in society or athletics itself. But, it is increasingly hard, as technology advances and becomes more specialized, to demarcate the line between cheating and doing your best. Steroid abusers clearly demonstrate a yearning to excel, but can we consider steroid use parallel to working a little harder in order to gain an edge? Should it, in that case, be illegal to take extra grounders? To swim a few more laps after practice? Should we make every athlete follow the same workout regimen, eat the same breakfast before a competition, compete in the same style and win in the same manner every time? Such a drab world of similarity would remove the excitement and purity of competition from sport. The question is, do sports represent the search for the perfect human, or humanity’s hopeless struggle for perfection?
I really want to see Oscar Pistorius in Beijing. I want to see him fly past competitors and win a gold medal in clean, fair competition. I’m not sure if I want to see Barry Bonds break Hank Aaron’s home run record, or Justin Gatlin to return to the track and win race after race. I sympathize, however, with their ongoing struggles for perfection, as fleeting as such perfection may be.