Oscar Pistorius indulged in Muay Thai, a martial art that has its origins in Thailand, on Thursday morning. A serious boating-related accident in February hasn’t deterred the triple gold medalist at the Paralympic Games from remaining adventurous.
At a café in Grayston, where Pistorius is waiting, he gets glances from people. A middle-aged lady comes up and shakes hands and then says: “I never thought I would get to meet you. It’s great to see you.”
Pistorius, the double amputee ‘blade runner’, is a hero in South Africa. He took a three-month break when he became a celebrity to stay away from the limelight. “Sometimes the media doesn’t understand that I am an athlete and not a celebrity,” Pistorius said.
Now, he is used to the attention. When parents discourage children from staring at his prosthetic limbs Pistorius approaches them.
“I tell them my legs fell off because I didn’t eat enough veggies. Parents like that line and children become less curious. Seeing me run helps educate people and hopefully inspires them. Talking about disability remains a taboo in most countries and I want to educate people,” Pistorius said.
He never tries to hide his prosthetics under long pants. In Mozambique, a country that has its fair share of people dismembered because of land mines, Pistorius won a race. Once he crossed the line he saw people pulling up their pants to reveal that they were also using artificial legs.
Pistorius was born without bones below his knee. But that didn’t stop him from playing rugby. It was during a rehabilitation programme, following an injury during rugby training that he took up sprinting.
He never looked back after that and runs on carbon-fibre-based blades that the IAAF believed gave him an unfair advantage.
With just a month and a half to go for the Beijing Olympics, the Court of Arbitration for Sport gave him the right to compete against able-bodied athletes after concluding that the IAAF didn’t have enough evidence to prove that his blades gave him an advantage.
“It was disappointing that some people believed I got an unfair advantage because of my blades. There are 17,000 such sets in the world used by people. They are not unique to the Paralympics. But there was so much fuss heading into the Beijing Olympics. I didn’t know whether I could run or not and there was very little time for me to really be prepared for the Beijing,” Pistorius, who missed the qualifying mark, said.
This year he has run 15 races in Europe in order to regain confidence and form. He hasn’t set a personal best yet. “It gives me greater satisfaction to finish, say, fourth in a race with a personal best time than win a race where I am off my best mark.”
Pistorius has run the 400m in a personal best of 46.25. Now, he is targeting running against able-bodied athletes at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi next year. “I would love to run in India. From what I have heard, it is a fascinating country. The qualifying A Standard is 45.45 and the B Standard is 45.95. I want to make it to the Commonwealth Games, but I’ll have to be at my best.”
He shows photos loaded in his Blackberry of a bike he owns, the Valentino Rossi Fiat-Yamaha replica. “I love my bikes. On a Saturday or a Sunday, I go for a ride.”
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