![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.japantoday.com\/images\/size\/x\/2012\/08\/photo_1344075749425-1-0.jpg\")
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South African Oscar Pistorius made history on Saturday when he became the first double amputee to compete in an athletics event at the Olympics.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old qualified for the semifinals of the 400 meters by running a season\u2019s best of 45.44 seconds in finishing second.<\/p>\n
Pistorius, who had both legs amputated below the knee before he was one year old because of a congenital condition, runs on carbon fibre blades.<\/p>\n
He is also due to run in the 4x400m relay at the Games.<\/p>\n
Pistorius, known as the \u201cBlade Runner,\u201d competed in the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Paralympics.<\/p>\n
But he was given the green light to make his debut in the Olympics following studies that found his prosthetics give him no advantage over his able-bodied rivals.<\/p>\n
His personal best is 45.07sec in the 400m and Pistorius came to London wanting to break the 45-second barrier.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I found out I had made the team, a certain pressure left and another pressure came in,\u201d he said prior to the Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hits you when you\u2019re standing on the starting blocks. At Athens and Beijing, that\u2019s when it really dawned upon me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is clear to compete on condition he uses the same prosthetic legs that have been used in Paralympic sport since 1996.<\/p>\n
Pistorius said exhaustive tests had proved that running on blades gave him no advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had to listen to the 5% of negativity, I wouldn\u2019t be here,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I have such an advantage, why isn\u2019t everybody else running the same times?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pistorius\u201413 kilograms lighter than he was in Beijing\u2014said he had no worries about competing in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, where his 89-year-old grandmother will be coming to watch him. <\/p>\n
Photo by AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African Oscar Pistorius made history on Saturday when he became the first double amputee to compete in an athletics event at the Olympics. The 25-year-old qualified for the semifinals of the 400 meters by running a season\u2019s best of 45.44 seconds in finishing second. Pistorius, who had both legs amputated below the knee before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}