Oscar 'could be fastest man'

The scientist who ensured Oscar Pistorius is allowed to participate in this year's Olympics is a double amputee who climbs sheer cliff faces with the limbs he invented.

And Professor Hugh Herr predicts Pistorius could, if he wanted to, smash the fastest able-bodied sprint times in the future, and that paralympians will make Olympic sprinters "seem slow" within 30 years.

Pistorius, South Africa's 400m "bladerunner", this week featured as the cover story in the New York Times Magazine, which said he could create "the marquee moment" at the 2012 London Olympics.

The story triggered a debate in the US over whether he was a pioneering "hero" or a threat to the fairness of the Olympics.

Herr told the Sunday Times that Pistorius was "a watershed individual" who would revolutionise sport.

Herr, director of "biomechatronics" at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), testified in 2008 on his tests of Pistorius before the Court of Arbitration in Switzerland, after the IAAF banned the athlete from able-bodied events.

A German research team had claimed that his carbon fibre limbs gave the double-amputee an unfair advantage, partly because he would use less energy than his rivals.

Herr disproved this and convinced the court it was impossible to tell if the limbs conferred any advantage "or disadvantage" .

At his MIT lab this week Herr revealed how he and a colleague had got the ruling overturned.

"Oscar runs fast - 9 to 10 metres per second. On a treadmill he can run, like, 10 and a half [metres per second].

"When a human being runs that fast, they use both aerobic and anaerobic energy. Currently, no one knows how to measure this. Yet the Cologne [research] group claimed to know how much he was using."

Herr alleged that the IAAF's "discrimination" was based on Pistorius's "insane talent" rather than his blades.

"The minute an athlete with an unusual body or mind becomes competitive, they're a threat. Before that happens, they're seen as cute or courageous. Once they win, they're accused of cheating."

He said that "morally and legally" no one should be banned from sporting events "based on opinions not grounded in science".

Herr usesartificial limbs that are packed with five computers, a dozen sensors and patented "actuators" which act like real muscle and tendons.

He walks like a person with normal legs, jogs "for recreation" and climbs mountains.

He said about 200 people were already using the new R400000 legs, and his bionic innovations have twice appeared on Time magazine's annual Top Ten Inventions list.

Herr said while Pistorius used blades which "emulated" natural legs, technology was advancing so rapidly that "there will be a day when artificial limbs will allow a person to run much faster than a person with biological limbs."

Pistorius was confident about qualifying for the Olympics: "It will be something that has never happened before. I think it will challenge people's perception of people living with a disability."