Why Oscar will always be my hero
Tales From The Water Cooler: Oscar lost, he was sick, someone stuck a microphone in his face and he sounded off
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Your support makes all the difference.Has the blade runner's brand been damaged? Not from where I'm sitting. South Africa's Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius created one of the week's major talking points when he complained about the blades used by Alan Fonteles Cardoso Oliveira after the latter defeated him in their 200m final.
An unfair advantage, he declared, which at first left an odd taste. He had to battle similar accusations about his blades when lining up against able bodied athletes as he did in the Olympics (he reached the 400m semi-finals). The Daily Mail even ventured to use to word "hypocrisy".
Just hang on a minute, though. Pistorius has been winning everything. Four years of training and he gets pipped on the line by someone who uses blades that if he used them would definitively rule him out of future able bodied competition where they're definitely illegal.
What makes Oscar Oscar is that he is a competitor, an elite sportsman. The Paralympics is wonderful, emotional, inspiring. But please, it's a sporting event too. Winning matters.
Oscar lost, he was sick, someone stuck a microphone in his face and he sounded off. Not too clever, but it happens.
I was lucky enough to see the great man and his team mates on Wednesday when they smashed the 100m relay world record. The crowd screamed him home. A couple near me rushed their son, who had a blade on one foot, trackside. Oscar seemed to spend an age at the spot where they were. A sweet moment.
He was a sporting hero of mine before I became disabled. His outburst changes nothing.
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