LONDON – Oscar Pistorius will get another chance to run at the Olympics after South Africa won an appeal to advance to the 4×400-meter relay final despite a crash in the heat.
The double-amputee runner was on the track but didn’t get to run in the heat Thursday because a teammate tumbled out after a collision with a Kenyan runner.
The Kenyan team was later disqualified for impeding Ofentse Mogawane. South Africa, the silver medalists at the last world championships, filed an appeal to be restored to the final.
The IAAF says the South Africans will run in Lane 9 after the jury met and “agreed to advance the South African team, even though they did not finish the race, considering that they had been severely damaged in the incident with Kenya.”
South Africa won a silver medal in the relay last year at the world championships in South Korea, where Pistorius ran in the heats but not in the final. The South Africans were again considered medal contenders at the London Games.
After a long battle for inclusion in able-bodied competition in the individual events, Pistorius won another moral victory last week when the IAAF announced he could run any part of the 4×400 relay in London.
Pistorius was the leadoff runner in the semifinals of the relay last year at the world championships in South Korea after the IAAF had raised concerns that his carbon-fiber blades would endanger others in the race.
The federation said it never restricted Pistorius to the first segment but merely advised that his blades could imperil other runners if he were running in a pack.