Oscar: you can come out of the shame closet now

PARALYMPIC DISPATCH

Last night Oscar Pistorius, having convincingly won his heat to secure his place in the T43 100 metres race, had the grace to draw back from his ungracious remarks of a couple of days previous. I applaud his new found humility and wish him all the best for tonight's final. Where he will up against our boy, Jonny Peacock, who has the distinct advantage of having one more leg than him. As we have seen, in the 100 metres, which is classically known as a power discipline, having one real leg to push away from the blocks offers a tremendous advantage over the short distance, an advantage which is absorbed in the longer events, where as we saw in the 200 metres, victory and 2nd place went to double amputees, because then balance is more important than simple power.



It has been said that in future the categories of T44 (single amputee) and T43 (double amputee) should be separated at the sprint events, and I'm sure this will have happened by the time Rio comes around. I'm not blaming the organisers for this: the entire area of disabled sport is so new everyone is still learning. Including, it would seem, Oscar himself...