Wednesday, 22 July 2009
22 July — The week that was in South African Sports and what's coming up — by Guy Mortimer

Oscar Pistorius
Oscar still falling short
Twenty-two-year-old double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius finished a respectable fourth in the 400m event in Velletri, Italy, on Saturday. The Pretoria-based Pistorius, aptly nicknamed the ‘Blade Runner’ due to his carbon fibre prostheses, was hoping to qualify for next month’s World Athletics Championships in Berlin, but his time of 47.42 sec was 1.87 sec adrift of the difficult 45.55 sec qualifying standard.
Consequently, Pistorius will probably have to wait until 2010 to qualify for a major able-bodied event as there are no more global championships taking place this year. However, he still has till August 3 to make the South African team for Berlin and had the satisfaction of defeating seasoned Mauritian runner Eric Milazar on Saturday - albeit by a mere one hundredth of a second. The race was won by Michael Mathieu of the Bahamas in 46.81 sec ... Continued