LONDON — Having already lost his aura of invincibility and his halo as a paragon of Paralympic virtues, Oscar Pistorius faces a stiff challenge Thursday night to his reputation as the fastest man on bladed feet.

The South African double-leg amputee, who lost his first ever Paralympic race Sunday night in the 200 metres and then uncharacteristically lashed out at what he felt was the unfair advantage enjoyed by his competitors on longer prosthetics, will race the marquee 100 metres at Olympic Stadium.

He has already acknowledged that he will be in tough because he hasn't trained much at the distance while he focused on fulfilling his dream to run in the Olympics at 400 metres.

One of the top contenders in the 100, American Jerome Singleton, says don't believe Pistorius's protestations.

“He's going to be prepared. It's going to be an epic race.”

It certainly figures to be the highlight of the track competition, with an incredibly tight field that also includes teenage British star Jonnie Peacock, a single-leg amputee who set the world record in the discipline at 10.85 seconds. Singleton and fellow American Blake Leeper will be right in the mix as will Brazilian Alan Oliveira, who won the 200 by blowing past Pistorius down the stretch to stun a crowd of 60,000.

Peacock, 19, was the fastest qualifier in Wednesday night's semifinals, winning his heat in 11.08, which tied American Marlon Shirley's Paralympic record set in Athens in 2004.

“It was a tough head wind,” said Peacock, who was cheered wildly by the crowd of 60,000. “I'll be quicker in the final.”

Pistorius won his heat in 11.18, his fastest time of the season, while another South Africa, Arnu Fourie, was the third-fastest qualifier in winning his heat in 11.29. Leeper ran 11.34, Singleton 11.46 and Oliveira 11.56.

Pistorius was roundly criticized for spoiling Oliveira's golden moment in the 200 when he complained in a TV interview immediately after the race that the Brazilian's carbon-fibre prosthetics, which were four longer than his own, allowed his rival to have a longer stride. He also said he had tried to raise the issue weeks before, when he actually singled out Leeper, with the International Paralympic Committee, but his concerns had fallen on deaf ears.

The irony is that Pistorius had to fight the International Amateur Athletics Federation to get into the Olympics after it initially argued that his prosthetic legs gave him an unfair advantage over able-bodied runners.

While some said Pistorius’s outburst was the action of a prima donna and sour grapes from someone stung by a loss for the first time — and the prospect of seeing his estimated $1.5 million in annual earnings shrink — others wondered if it was calculated. What better form than the most watched Paralympics ever to bring to the forefront a vexing issue that concerns several amputee runners?

The IPC was quick to stress after the 200 that Oliveira's blades did not break any rules, insisting that all the athletes were measured immediately prior to the race and passed the tests.

Since 2007, the IPC has used a complex formula to calculate the permitted length of prostheses. For double amputees such as Pistorius and Oliveira, it is based on measuring each athlete's body and arm span and using this data to estimate their overall height if they had legs. But the formula allows the athletes some latitude on those heights.

Several of the runners said Wednesday that while Pistorius's comments were ill-timed, they supported his point that the IPC needs to re-evaluate and tighten the formula in the interest of fairness.


“The classes need to be split,” said Singleton, who upset Pistorius in the 100 metres at the 2011 world championships. “It's not apples to apples, it's like apples to pineapples right now. If they want to keep us together, they need to re-evaluate that formula.”

“We need to have an idea of the exact height for an athlete to run in, and maybe have a variation of like one centimetre, so you know you're racing the same athlete in all competitions. Single-leg amputees, we don't have too much manoeuvring when it comes to height.”

“As time changes, science changes, so we have to make sure it's fair to all competitors.”


“With the formula they use, they're just not proportional,” he said. “Every person running here is not breaking any rules, they're not doing anything wrong. It's just that the rules leave such a wide vary of what they can do with their prosthetics. If they do tighten it up to where it makes more sense, I don't think they'll need to split up the classes.

“It's one of the most exciting races in the Paralympics and we don't want to get away from that. We just want to even up the field.”