Steve Cram column

By Steve Cram BBC Sport commentator

Oscar Pistorius is a young guy who is ambitious to run as fast as he can against the best 400m runners in the world.

That is obviously commendable, but I'm not sure he fully appreciates the efforts that have been made on his behalf by the IAAF, athletics' governing body.

It has allowed this window of opportunity for him to race against able-bodied athletes while proper scientific research into his blades is carried out.

I also think there's a lot of goodwill for him from other athletes, some of whom were kept out of the races he competed in at the weekend.

Pistorius has been very critical of the IAAF

I'm not sure he has appreciated that either.

I chatted to Oscar on Sunday morning at our hotel and he is a lovely guy. He was excited and nervous about the upcoming race.

And he is showing that no matter what disability you have, it is the athlete's thinking that is important.

Oscar wants to be as good as he can be and no-one should stop him doing that. But it is about finding the right place for him to do so.

My advice to him now would be to go home and make sure he sits down with the IAAF and tries to sort out a way forward.

The IAAF is there to protect the sport as a whole. The argument is not whether someone should compete in the Olympics or Paralympics.

There are people from the Paralympics who have competed against able-bodied athletes, such as the South African swimmer Natalie du Toit.

What this is about is technical aids and whether the blades enhance his performance beyond a level which would be available to an able-bodied athlete.

The IAAF has to ask what will be the future developments in prosthetics, because it has to protect everyone in the future.

It is a really difficult issue and I will be as interested as anyone else to see the analysis further down the line.

Whatever the outcome of the IAAF's research, I do not think Oscar has got the time to improve enough to run in next year's Beijing Olympics.

He would have to run at least a second quicker in order to get selected for the South African team, which is a mountain to climb.

If he does not make the Olympic squad, he has still got the Paralympics two weeks later, where he would be the undoubted star, which is a lovely position to be in.

After that he will be determined to get better and better and to get in meets on merit.

Because I know he wants to be judged on performance and not his blades.

---

Jeremy Wariner owes the people of Sheffield an apology.

After a fairly minor stumble at the start of the 400m, he just stopped and pulled out of the race.

Wariner pulled out of the 400m after an early stumble

If he had got up and carried on he would perhaps have lost a tenth of a second and could have still won the race.

To stop like that was a pretty poor effort and certainly not worthy of someone of his status. He did everyone a disservice, not least himself.

We had some American friends at the meeting and Wariner is a big hero of theirs.

They bumped into him at the hotel in the morning and had their picture taken with him and were really looking forward to seeing him run.

Sadly, they did not get that chance. It is a shame, because I had always admired Wariner in the past.

He seemed to carry himself very well, had a lot of respect for his competitors and always gave 100%. I've had to reassess that opinion after this non-performance.

---

The 400m might have failed to live up to the pre-race hype, but there were a couple of other stunning performances in Sheffield.

The men's 3,000m was absolutely breathtaking. Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele produced one of the best runs I've ever seen at the distance to beat arch-rival Craig Mottram.

Mottram had beaten Bekele's younger brother, Tariku, last month and Kenesa was out for revenge.

He took the race to Mottram from the start and produced a phenomenal performance.

And from a British point of view, Andy Baddeley was brilliant in winning the 1500m.

He beat one of the best in the world, Bernard Lagat, and set a personal best. He is getting better all the time and certainly looks capable of getting to the final at the world championships.