Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge

An international court ruling has given South African 400-meter runner Oscar Pistorius approval to compete in the Summer Olympics.
The double amputee told reporters in Italy, “I think this day is going to go down in history for the equality of disabled people.”
The issue is that some view Pistorius’ “disability” as being qualitatively similar to that of a NASCAR Chevy being accidentally equipped with too little internal engine friction and too much horsepower. Pistorius, wearing two giant springlike devices in place of his lower legs and feet (picture below the “fold”), basically runs like a velociraptor once might have, inasmuch as Stephen Spielberg can be trusted as a paleozoologist. Many have argued that if anything, Pistorius runs faster than he would have were he using the legs he was born with, and is in effect riding a one-cylinder Harley in the Tour de France.

Pistorius’ best time, 46.56 seconds, is well short of the 45.55 needed to qualify for Beijing in the open 400. He could compete as a member of the 4 x 400 squad without an individual qualifying time, but the South African team hasn’t qualified in that event either.
The Paralympics were conceived to give people who were presumably compromised by severe injuries or cruel tosses of the genetic dice to compete for global championships. Does the fact that no one foresaw the day when technology might transform partial mechanical compensation into an outright mechanical advantage imply that athletes such as Pistorius should be, as some would assert, penalized?
That’s debatable, but one thing is certain — Pistorius is bent on having it both ways:

Pistorius said he will be running in both able-bodied and Paralympic events before Beijing … [he] also expects to compete in Beijing at the Sept. 6-17 Paralympic Games.

Sorry, dude. Pick one or the other. In 1997, U.S. mile superstar Paul McMullen cut off a few toes mowing his lawn, but he didn’t try to enter the Paralympics. Instead he returned to run a 3:54 mile the next year and a 3:33 1500 meters (equivalent to about a 3:50 mile and one of the top 10 U.S. times ever) in 2001.
One observer at Letsrun.com, probably the Web’s pre-eminent track and field discussion forum, wryly referred to him as “handicapable.” A poll on the front page of the same site asking whether Pistorius should be allowed to run in the Olympics currently has the O-man down by a 3-to-1 margin.
My suspicion is that Pistorius’ bid for the traditional Olympics will be more likely to accrue favor in track fans’ minds if he is willing to set aside his Para plans now that his appeal to run in the regular Olympics has been upheld. But he won’t, because he hasn’t run fast enough to qualify for Beijing and is thus hedging.
Go vote in the poll, or not. But my overriding thought is this: I’d rather see American pedestrians rambling the streets in Pistoresque devices than tooling along on those friggin’ Segways.