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LONDON (AP) — Oscar Pistorius will be ineligible to compete in
Paralympic events during the entirety of his five-year prison sentence.
The
double-amputee South African runner, who has won six Paralympic gold
medals, was given a five-year jail term Tuesday for killing Reeva
Steenkamp.
Pistorius could be released after 10 months to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest.
The
International Paralympic Committee said, under its rules, "the sentence
means Pistorius is ineligible to compete for the entire five years
regardless of where it is served."
That would rule the 27-year-old Pistorius out of the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.
In 2012, Pistorius became the first double-amputee sprinter to compete at both the Olympics and Paralympics in London.
The
International Olympic Committee called the case "a human tragedy for
the family of Reeva Steenkamp and also for Oscar Pistorius," but
declined to comment on his eligibility to compete.
"We hope very
much that time will bring comfort to all those concerned but at this
stage we have no further comment to make," IOC spokesman Mark Adams
said.
The International Association of Athletics Federations said: "The IAAF has no comment to make about Oscar Pistorius."
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
