FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Double amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, whose prosthetic legs have been decried by some as an unfair advantage, won an appeal today and will be permitted to run at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

That doesn't necessarily mean he will run, however. He would still need to run a qualifying time in his best event, the 400 meters, or be chosen by South Africa for a relay team.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled today that Pistorius is eligible to race against able-bodied athletes, overturning a ban by the IAAF, track and field's governing body, which said carbon fiber prosthetic blades are more efficient than human legs and therefore give him an unfair mechanical advantage. In a classy move, IAAF President Lamine Diack did not criticize the arbitration board's ruling and instead released a statement praising Pistorius today:

"The IAAF accepts the decision of CAS and Oscar will be welcomed wherever he competes this summer. He is an inspirational man and we look forward to admiring his achievements in the future."

The arbitration board's ruling, which was unanimous, is effective immediately.

Previously on FanHouse:
Oscar Pistorius Takes Second in 400 Meters, Runs Behind World-Class Sprinters
'Would I Want My Legs Back? I'd Have to Sit Down and Think About It'
400 Meters: Oscar Pistorius Can't Keep Up, Jeremy Wariner Stumbles and Stops

The world abounds these days with versatile, young athletes. Some of them play multiple (nine) positions in one sport, and others just win state high school track championships. By themselves.

That's right. Bonnie Richardson, of Rochelle High School in Texas, won the state 1-A track and field championship all by her lonesome. She was the only athlete from her high school that qualified to appear, and she straight up rolled the competition. In fact, her feat was so amazing, she shocked herself.

'This totally blows me away,' the freckle-faced Richardson said while holding the trophy with a gold medal draped on her neck. 'This is amazing. I had no idea it was even possible.'

Richardson's title march began with field events on Friday when she won the high jump (5 feet, 5 inches), placed second in the long jump (18-7) and was third in the discus (121-0).

On Saturday, she won the 200 meters in 25.03 seconds and nearly pulled off a huge upset in the 100 before finishing second (12.19) to defending champion Kendra Coleman of Santa Anna. Richardson, a junior, earned a total of 42 team points to edge team runner-up Chilton (36).

The only thing that might top her story is the manner in which she trained; Rochelle apparently does not even have a track on campus, requiring her to either "watch for potholes" or to travel 10 miles. And, according to the AP, she also plays tennis and basketball. And football, if her parents would let her. In other words, Richardson laughs at Dan and Dave.

Jamaica's Usain Bolt ran a blistering 100-meter dash time of 9.76 seconds today at the Jamaica International Invitational, the second-fastest 100in history. Here's the highlight:

Bolt was aided by a tailwind of 1.8 meters per second, meaning if the wind had been just a little bit harder at his back the time wouldn't have counted. But today's race shows that Bolt and his countryman Asafa Powell, who owns the world record of 9.74 seconds, have a real chance of going gold-silver at the Beijing Olympics.

Powell, who finished fifth in the 100 meters in 2004, did not run today because of a pectoral injury but will compete at the Olympics.

"I never knew that I would run 9.76, so this is good," Bolt told the Jamaican Observer.

Olympic athletes often don't get paid to do anything other than look good. In that vein, Attractive Olympians handicaps which athletes may rake in endorsement deals after the Olympics.

Jamaica's Asafa Powell is officially the World's Fastest Man. His first world record in the 100 meters came in 2005 when he ran it in 9.77 seconds; he has since lowered that mark to a paltry 9.74 seconds.

However, his legacy is marred by disappointing results on the grandest stages. He finished fifth at the Athens Olympiad in 2004, and his best finish in the 100 at the World Championships was a bronze in Osaka in 2007. He may be the fastest man ever, but he still needs Olympic gold.

He also needs your approval. Sure, he seems like an attractive man, but has he ever been judged as such by the readers of sports blogs? After the jump, enjoy some shirtless beefcake, analyze our stat sheet, and vote in the blogosphere's most superficial ongoing series.

Kenya's Robert Cheruiyot continued his dominance of America's most prestigious road race today, winning the Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 7 minutes, 46 seconds.

In the women's race, Ethiopia's 22-year-old Dire Tune beat the Russian Alevtina Biktimirova by 2 seconds in the closest finish ever. Tune finished in 2:25:25.

South African Ernst Van Dyk finished the men's wheelchair race in 1:26:49 to win for the seventh time. Japan's Wakako Tsuchida won the women's wheelchair race for the second straight year with a time of 1:48:32.

The big story is Cheruiyot, the 29-year-old who previously won in 2003, 2006 and 2007. He won this year's race handily, although he failed to top his course record of 2:07:14. Kenyans have now won the men's race in 16 of the last 18 Boston Marathons.

Maurice Greene became the latest high-profile U.S. Olympian dragged into the doping muck over the weekend, clouding the world of track a little bit more as we move toward Beijing. The New York Times article containing the allegation against Greene, which he's denied, also hints that it could just be the tip of the iceberg as the case against Marion Jones's coach, Trevor Graham, makes its way through court.

The United States Olympic Committee doesn't see that as any reason to worry about athletes using performance enhancing drugs during the Summer Olympics, though. U.S.O.C. Chairman Peter Ueberroth and chief executive Jim Scherr addressed concerns about their team, although they had slightly different levels of conviction.

"[With] the changes we've made to our doping programs, the protocols we've had in place, we're very confident that this team is clean and we'll field a clean team in Beijing," said Scherr. "Of course there's no way we can guarantee anything. But we feel very good about this team and the progress we've made [against] doping."

"This will be a clean team," Ueberroth said.

Scherr went on to call the doping problems part of the past when it's quite clear, from cycling to weightlifting to track, that it is very much a problem of the present. It's great to fight against it, it's great to strive for a clean team but shouldn't Ueberroth know better than to guarantee a clean team?

Lay down with dopers and you'll be punished. That was the message the International Olympic Committee sent down today when they disqualified the eight athletes who shared Olympic relay medals with Marion Jones at the 2000 Olympics. The runners have been ordered, via the U.S. Olympic Committee, to return their medals.

You have to feel awful for the eight women who didn't cheat yet get punished for it anyway. Cheaters should be punished and if Jones was cheating, then so was the whole team which is tough but fair. The circumstances surrounding Jones and the Sydney Games aren't exactly cut and dry. She never tested positive at the Olympics and the IOC only acted once Jones admitted she was a BALCO girl.

I also don't think the medals should be given to the next teams in line. Treat it the way the NCAA does when they vacate a team's place in a Final Four. Michigan's Fab Five made the Final Four in 1993 but were later stripped of their laurels because of a variety of infractions. That doesn't mean Temple made it just as it doesn't mean that Jamaica won the gold medal in the 4X400 relay in 2000. I know they didn't because I saw the United States win the race. Strip them, leave the medals unwon and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Olympic athletes often don't get paid to do anything other than look good. In that vein, Attractive Olympians handicaps which athletes may rake in endorsement deals after the Olympics.

Breaux Greer not only holds the American record for the javelin, in 2007 he had the best throw in the world. He has been the best American in the sport for roughly the last eight years, and likely would have won the U.S.'s first Olympic medal in javelin since 1972 in 2000 or 2004 had he not been injured (instead, he finished 12th both times).

An outspoken, gregarious competitor who wears all black and cracks jokes to the media, Breaux is comfortable in the spotlight. Whether he can get into that spotlight in Beijing as his window closes, however, remains to be seen.

But we're not here to judge him on his merits: we're here to evaluate his physical appearance. What do you think? Is the spiky dyed hair rakish or repulsive? The black nail polish edgy or idiotic? The all-black outfit stylish or stupid? Check out more pictures and vote after the jump.

Olympic athletes often don't get paid to do anything other than look good. In that vein, Attractive Olympians handicaps which athletes may rake in endorsement deals after the Olympics.

Stacy Dragila is at once a pioneer and an iconoclast in the women's pole vault. In the first international competition she ever won, the IAAF (track and field's ruling body) deemed her outfit too skimpy and refused to give her the $25,000 prize. Three years later, she broke the world record during a gold medal performance at the 2000 Games in Sydney.

Unfortunately, Dragila never got a chance to defend her gold; she failed to survive the qualifying round in Athens, and now, after two injury-plagued seasons, she's looking to make her third Olympic team.

Now 37, Dragila's age has to be a concern not just for her competitive health, but also for blog readers who want only to judge her by her looks. Will it affect her legacy of hotness? Vote after the jump!

The violence in Tibet has pushed concerns about air pollution into a secondary position among complaints about having the Olympics in Beijing of late. The air will have a lot more to do with the athletic performances this summer and already cost the games one of its best performers.

Haile Gebrselassie announced he wouldn't run the marathon some time ago because he feared for his health in the polluted air and this week came word that he'd skip the 10,000 meters as well. He's a two-time gold medalist at that distance and holds the world record in the marathon which, even at this late stage in his career, makes his absence a glaring one.

Jacques Rogge, head of the IOC, in his typically double-dealing fashion discredited any health problems associated with the air.

"The health of the athletes is absolutely not in any danger. It might be that some will have to have a slightly reduced performance, but nothing will harm the health of the athletes. The IOC will take care of that."

Rogge, who backed up his assertion with nothing but bravado, previously said that events would be postponed if the air was too poor. That's odd if it doesn't effect athletes. He also sloughed off Gebrselassie's absence, saying that the Ethopian was "slightly asthmatic."

True as that might be, it hasn't affected him in Sydney, Atlanta, Berlin, Dubai or other places where he's won races. The IOC loves to crow about its mission of putting on the best Olympics possible and, simply stated, one without Gebrselassie can't be that.