News Digest

Oscar Pistorius begins five-year sentence; will the Olympian compete again?

Oscar Pistorius will not compete in the Paralympics for five years, according to officials, barring the “blade-runner” from Rio Olympics in 2016 and raising questions about whether he’ll make a bid for Tokyo in 2020. The five-year ban handed down by International Paralympic Committee guidelines will stand regardless of whether or not he serves the full five-year jail sentence for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day last year. Though the arrival of 2019 will open up Pistorius’s eligibility, the double-amputee Olympic runner will be nearly 34 by the start of the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, and it remains to be seen if he will seek — or be physically able — to train and compete again.

The Paralympic movement has never been about one person, and it never will be.

Craig Spence, spokesman for the IPC

Pistorius could be released after as few as 10 months for “good behavior” and serve out the rest of his sentence under house arrest, but “The only way he could compete earlier is if he or his team appealed and got a lesser sentence,” said Craig Spence, spokesman for the IPC. In 2012, Pistorius became the first double-amputee sprinter to compete at both the Olympics and Paralympics in London.