The highly sprung athlete Oscar Pistorius had been copping it from both sides of the athletic divide but his decision to stop a BBC radio interview in its tracks has turned his disability into a prime time issue. A South African, the four-time Paralympic medallist halted the interview after presenter Rob Bonnet asked if he was an ''inconvenient embarrassment'' to athletics authorities due to the controversy surrounding his prosthetic legs.
Known variously as ''Blade Runner'' and ''the fastest man on no legs'', Pistorius, a double amputee, is the world record-holder in the 100, 200 and 400 metres (sport class T44) events and runs with the aid of ''Cheetah Flex-Foot'' carbon fibre transtibial artificial limbs.
Last week he became the first Paralympian to win an able-bodied world championship medal when he helped South Africa take silver in the 4x400 metres relay in the South Korean city of Daegu.
Despite performing well in the heats, the 24-year-old was dropped from the relay final. South African officials benched him when accusations again started flying that his artificial limbs afforded him an unfair advantage over able-bodied rivals. He also finished last in his individual 400m semi-final.
Pistorius has been a controversial figure since 2007 when he first ran internationally against able-bodied athletes. That year, the International Association of Athletics Federations amended competition rules to ban the use of ''any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides a user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device''. It claimed the amendment was not specifically aimed at Pistorius but scientists who watched his performances decided he had considerable advantages over athletes without prosthetic limbs and in January 2008 he was rubbed out.
A federation ruling in January 2008 banning him from competition, including the Olympics, was overturned after the Court of Arbitration for Sport found there was no evidence that Pistorius had any net advantage over able-bodied athletes.
Fears the Olympics could be taken over by an army of amputee runners were scoffed at by experts. Pistorius, they said, was a one-of-a-kind phenomenon: many of his amputee competitors acquired their amputations later in life but he was born without fibulae and subsequently had his lower legs removed at 11 months, which made his athletic development different.
Now Pistorius's fellow Paralympians are also hunting him for daring to think of competing in the Olympics and the Paralympics. Legendary wheelchair racer, British television presenter and member of the House of Lords, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, called on Pistorius to opt for one or the other and said the T44 400m should be dropped from the Paralympics to prevent the event turning into a B standard competition.
The BBC had pre-taped the interview and Pistorius had just summarily put down Baroness Grey-Thompson's call for a form of athletic apartheid when Bonnet observed that he was an inspiration to Paralympic athletes, before continuing … ''but it might also be said that you're an inconvenient embarrassment to the South African authorities and the IAAF because effectively, you're taking them into uncharted ethical waters here. What's your reaction to that?''
Pistorius: ''I think that's an insult to me and I think this interview is over.''
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