One Tragic Night (14 page)

One such incident from which Oscar did indeed need rescuing was in August 2006 when he landed up behind bars for the first time. Having already developed a keen interest in firearms, Oscar was at a shooting range with a friend when gunpowder rubbed off onto his prosthetic legs. A week later, he flew to Assen in the Netherlands for the Disabled World Championships where he won a gold medal and improved his times in all three of his chosen disciplines. But on the way home via Iceland, Oscar lost his airplane ticket and was interrogated and searched by airport security. When they discovered the gunpowder residue on his prosthetics, Oscar was immediately arrested and accused of terrorism.

He says, ‘Then, again, without warning, an officer appeared with my belongings in tow, and told me that I was free to go as the security risk had been neutralized.' He finally managed to get on a flight home.

Back home and on the track, Oscar was training harder than ever before in the hope of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. But as his times improved, so too did the controversy around him. Some began to suggest that his blades were giving him an unfair advantage and needed to be viewed with circumspection. This was the start of a more fundamental challenge for Oscar – not just to qualify to take part in the Olympic Games, but to prove that he was in fact entitled to participate in the competition.

Oscar had previously been invited to participate in the Helsinki Grand Prix but was unable to do so because of school commitments. In 2007, he finally felt that his qualifying times were good enough for him to be competing at such a high level internationally. Ironically, it so happened that in March 2007, the IAAF met in Mombasa in Kenya to adopt a rule that would for all intents and purposes impede his participation.

Rule 144-2 prohibited the use of ‘any technical devices designed to improve performance' during a race. In short, it prevented the use of any device that would see one athlete benefit from technology over another. Some believed that the rule was adopted to target Oscar specifically and stop him from competing in events, but in June the IAAF issued a press release stating that the rule was not to be interpreted as concerning his sporting participation, at least until proper testing could be done on his prostheses. This meant that, despite the swirling controversy and negative press, Oscar could compete and did so in the 400 metres event at the Rome Golden Gala in July 2007. He came second in a time
of 46.90 seconds – but more crucially, he had made history. It was the first time, at the Olympic stadium in Rome no less, that a disabled athlete had competed alongside able-bodied competitors at international level.

Of course, this meant that the media scrutiny and the criticism from naysayers would be ramped up. This was amplified by the British media who bombarded the runner with questions about the IAAF decision and whether his Cheetahs – his artificial blades – improperly benefited him on the track. Why should he want to take part in the Olympic Games when the Paralympics had been designed for people with just his kind of disability? Did he consider the Paralympic Games inferior?

‘I believe the two games are not mutually exclusive. It is not because I am able to compete in the Olympics that I will not compete in the Paralympics. To me the Olympics are just another sporting avenue and like most other athletes I am eager to explore every possibility and to be present and competitive in all the top sporting arenas. I do not consider the Paralympics to be inferior, merely different, and it remains incontestable that the Olympics are the ultimate sporting event. I am not a Paralympic athlete, nor am I an Olympic athlete. I am simply an athlete and a sprinter,' Oscar explains in his book.

Oscar was becoming increasingly well known for his resilience and perseverance in his dogged attempt to compete. This was largely attributed to his attitude to life in general, as he sets out in his autobiography. ‘If God were to ask me if I wanted my legs back, I would really have to think carefully about my answer. I do not feel remotely as if I have been short-changed by life. Had I been born with normal legs I would not be the man I am today. My less-than-ordinary life has helped my potential to shine through. I am not sure that I would have had the same motivation and determination to improve myself and become an athlete.'

With the 2007 racing season over, Oscar returned home to South Africa with a shadow hanging heavily over his career and his achievements. The IAAF had taken the decision to carry out tests in the November of that year to prove definitively whether or not his prostheses constituted a technical advantage. The tests would be conducted at the German Sport University Cologne, supervised by the renowned Professor of Biomechanics, Dr Gert-Peter Brüggemann. The IAAF had already begun studying Oscar's blades at the Golden Gala in Rome when high-resolution cameras were installed along the length of the track to measure his stride. Technicians at the University of Rome subsequently found that his stride was not longer than that of other athletes, but they did discover that Oscar's performance could be measured differently to other athletes. While most able-bodied athletes reach the peak of their race in the first 70 metres, he
starts slowly and peaks at around 200 metres to 300 metres.

So it was that Oscar subjected himself to two days of tests in Germany that saw his performance being measured alongside five other able-bodied athletes who had run similar 400 metres times to him. ‘The tests themselves were conducted in a circus-like atmosphere. I was at the centre of a throng made up of doctors, scientists, technicians and then the cameramen who were filming the procedure for the IAAF; the pressure on me was intense. This was the first time ever that the IAAF (or anyone else for that matter) had dedicated time and resources to researching the question of prosthetics.'

A month later a leaked copy of Professor Brüggemann's report was published by German newspaper
Die Welt
, days before Oscar had been sent a copy. The tests had found that over a distance of 400 metres, his prosthetic limbs gave him an unfair advantage, effectively banning him from competing in able-bodied competition. Professor Brüggemann found that the carbon-fibre prostheses constituted a mechanical advantage because the energy restored from the track to the athlete is over three times higher with a prosthetic limb. He also found that Oscar was able to run at the same speed as able-bodied athletes while expending 25 per cent less energy and this explained why he was so much faster towards the end of a 400 metres race.

Oscar had until 10 January to comment on the Brüggemann report – which didn't leave him much time. Together with Peet van Zyl, he discussed the findings with experts around the world, specifically the University of Miami's Professor Robert Gailey. Oscar's backers didn't disagree with the research and tests conducted in Cologne but did take issue with the interpretation of the data. In short, they argued that the analysis could not only be conducted on the final phase of a 400 metres race, but rather that each phase of the race should be studied. They also insisted that both the positive and negative implications of prosthetic limbs must be considered and not merely the benefits. As a result, Oscar responded to the IAAF by the deadline of 10 January, arguing that the tests were biased and were limited in scope and that the conclusions should be rejected. The IAAF responded by ratifying its ban, effectively barring Oscar from competing in able-bodied competition. His only choice was to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Oscar thus needed to put together a team of experts to run their own tests that would challenge those conducted in Germany. This team included Professor Hugh Herr from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, himself a double amputee; Professor Rodger Kram from the University of Colorado; and Professor Peter Weyand from Rice University in Houston. Legally, Oscar was assisted by
law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, which had contacted him offering its services. It was agreed that the tests would be conducted in Houston in February, days after Oscar attended the Laureus Awards in St Petersburg in Russia.

‘It was soon clear that the Houston results would differ from those charted in Cologne,' said Oscar in his book. ‘This was a huge relief to me, as the IAAF had relied heavily on these specific tests results to demonstrate my technical advantage. Over a period of ten days I participated in many different tests; at times I thought that I was repeating the same experiment endlessly, but in reality there were slight but significant variations both in the focus and in what was required of me. My acceleration was studied in detail; my oxygen consumption was measured at different speeds at different points during the race, as was the conduct and handling of my individual prostheses. I learnt much over this period, and left Houston feeling resolved and confident that the process would prove that the tests in Cologne had been inconclusive.'

By March, Oscar's team had reached the conclusion that there was no way that his prostheses gave him a technical advantage over other athletes. ‘When one considers all the hard work and emotional turmoil, all the controversy and speculation, it was immensely gratifying finally to be able to repudiate my critics and show that my achievements were mine alone and dependent on my commitment, training and talent and not my prosthetic limbs,' he reflected in his book.

As Oscar waited for the Court of Arbitration hearing scheduled for late April, he concentrated on life at home, his training schedule, a new love interest and a new house – in Silver Woods in Pretoria. The new girlfriend was Jenna Edkins, who Oscar describes in his book as ‘a delightful, sweet-natured, beautiful' 18-year-old with blonde hair and ‘sparkling eyes'. The new house was in an upmarket, green area of the capital in a secure housing estate, which Oscar found went a long way towards helping him feel ‘more stable and rooted' in life. ‘After my mother's passing and my years in boarding school I found that I was yearning for a space of my own that I could make my home. In truth the house is much larger than I need, but I wanted it to be somewhere I would be able to grow into and where all of my family and friends would be welcome to spend time or just drop in,' Oscar says in his book.

He had a ‘substantial' wooden table made up for entertaining and fitted the house with several television screens, all with the intention that the airy, open-plan house would be a homely, hospitable spot for entertaining. Oscar wanted the house to be a venue where he, his family and his friends could ‘make the most of being together and celebrate life'. His two dogs, Silo an American pit bull and Enzo, a bull terrier named after Enzo Ferrari, shared the house with him.

At the end of April, Oscar and his team flew to Lausanne for the hearings at the joint International Olympic Committee and the Court of Arbitration for Sport headquarters. His fate on the athletic track would be decided by a room full of officious lawyers – unforeseen preparation for what would come later in life on a far more intensive level when his fate would again be determined by the law. Oscar admits he found the pace intense and was ‘absolutely gripped' by the proceedings, which he found ‘fascinating'. The judges' mandate was only to examine the issue objectively because Oscar was not being accused of any wrongdoing as such. ‘It was rather unusual to see everybody come together and debate and dissect the matter intelligently and dispassionately, without the adversarial climate that is often created when you have two opposing teams and a person in the dock who has allegedly committed some misdemeanour,' he wrote in his memoir. ‘I also found the hearings psychologically very demanding. Not only was this my last chance, but my battle, which had started as a personal quest born out of personal frustration, had developed into a symbolic fight against discrimination. I felt that I had come to represent all people like me, both today and in the future, who play sport or anything else for that matter and who want to be treated as equals.'

The court returned a verdict in May, while Oscar was in Milan, waiting in the offices of his lawyers. It ruled to overturn the ban, having found that it was not possible to conclude that the prosthetic limbs gave him a technical advantage over other athletes. This was because at no time was it conclusively proven that the advantages of competing with the prostheses outweighed the disadvantages of competing with those same limbs.

Even the IAAF seemed pleased with the outcome of the appeal court, which effectively was a loss for them. A picture of Oscar racing around a track on his J-shaped blades was posted on the association's website and a statement was released by the IAAF's president Lamine Diack. ‘Oscar will be welcomed wherever he competes this summer. He is an inspirational man, and we look forward to admiring his achievements in the future.'

By this point, however, there were just four months to go until the Olympics in Beijing and attention was now firmly fixed on whether he would qualify to compete. ‘It's still going to be difficult. I've missed lots of races,' Oscar was quoted in
The Washington Post.
‘Now that the ban's been lifted, my focus is back on athletics. I'm psyched about that.'

To qualify for South Africa's Olympics team, the 21-year-old still needed to shave half a second off his personal best time in the 400 metres, from 46.56 seconds to 45.95 seconds. There was the possibility that South African officials
could name him as a member of the country's 400 metres relay unit, but the national team was unlikely to be good enough to qualify for Beijing.

South African athletic officials went so far as to waive the requirement that Olympics-bound athletes compete in the national championships in March. They planned to accept any qualifying time from a sanctioned event, anywhere in the world. Oscar had several races already scheduled in Europe before South Africa had to announce its Olympic team in July. ‘The young man is a fighter,' said Leonard Chuene, then president of Athletics South Africa. ‘Let's give him opportunity and support, and I believe very strongly he will make it.'