Blade Runner Appeals Decision, Still Out of Olympics

After spending the better part of a year trying to reach Olympic qualifying marks, double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius will be skipping the Games this year, according to BBC News. Several weeks ago, the International Association of Athletics Federation concluded that Pistorius’s J-shaped prosthetic "cheetah" blades qualified as a technical aid, giving him an unfair advantage over able-bodied athletes. The 21-year-old South African appealed the decision, but recognizes that if the decision is changed, it can’t be done in time for the Beijing Olympics. The IAAF recently told The New York Times that it was unclear how this ruling would affect other amputees. They did say athletes must prove their prosthetic limbs do not provide an evident advantage. The IAAF made up a new $50,000 test to determine unfair advantage and called it the Pistorius test. Pistorius himself, and the International Paralympic Committee, believes it was inadequate and inconclusive. He has contacted American experts and plans to travel to the States for additional testing. "We have appealed and are busy setting things up for the testing," he told the BBC. "But it's a massive commitment, and there won't be time to get it all done before Beijing."

--Claire Napier Galofaro