Pistorius Signs With Fast Track

Double Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius has appointed international sports marketing agency Fast Track to act as his publicists.? ?

The announcement will see Fast Track lead on all international media activity and will be Oscar’s official spokesperson.? ?

The 24-year-old South African athlete said: ‘Fast Track has a detailed understanding of elite disability sport and the agency is very well connected in Olympic and Paralympic sport and I am delighted to announce I will be working with them’.? ?

Fast Track head of communications, Steve Chisholm, added: ‘Oscar Pistorius is an inspirational athlete and will be one of the faces of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games’.

‘Fast Track has a great history with Oscar and we are thrilled to be working with him to publicise his outstanding achievements’.

Pistorius has a chance of competing at next years London 2012 Olympic Games after achieving the qualifying time for the World Championships last week.

He clocked his personal best of 45.07 seconds in Lignano, Italy, last Tuesday.

However, the South African achieved the ‘A’ qualification standard with the run and needs to repeat the feat twice next year to achieve South Africa’s Olympic qualification criteria.

In 2008, the South African won his appeal against a ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), meaning that the double amputee could compete to qualify for the Olympics.

Pistorius had been ruled out of the Beijing Olympics earlier that year by the International Association of Athletics Federations on the grounds that he could not compete with able-bodied athletes because the carbon-fibre blades attached to both his legs gave him an advantage.

However, Swiss-based CAS, the main arbitration body for resolution in sport, said in a statement that the IAAF had not proved competition rules would be contravened by his J-shaped blades.

London 2012 chair Seb Coe said last week: ‘He is eligible [for the Olympics] and I am guessing he will want to compete. We will welcome him’.

‘Those issues were teased out, the Court of Arbitration made their judgement and he’s eligible to compete and we will make him very welcome’.? ?The 24-year-old runs with carbon fibre prosthetic running blades after both his lower legs were amputated when he was 11 months old.