Behind the Cover Story - NYTimes.com Michael Sokolove, a contributing writer for the magazine, wrote this week's cover story on the double-amputee Olympic hopeful Oscar Pistorius. Sokolove is the author of three books: "Warrior Girls," about the epidemic of injuries among young female athletes; "The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry"; and "Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose." What was the most surprising thing about seeing Oscar Pistorius run in person? Did watching a supposedly disabled person run that fast create any sort of cognitive dissonance? Cognitive dissonance is a good way of putting it. In my mind, there is an image of an Olympic-level runner. He is a human thoroughbred, powerful and graceful, like Michael Johnson, the world-record holder in the 400 meters. Oscar is certainly powerful, and graceful in his own way, but I could not look at him and say: this is the highest order of the human form. You can't. There's something missing. So I had to adjust my mind and say: this is also a runner, possibly an Olympian, and regard him on his own terms. The technology for his running prostheses, the Cheetahs, has been around since the "90s. Do any amputee runners use other technology? Would he ever consider switching to something of a newer design? To my knowledge, all elite amputee runners compete on the Cheetahs or something like them. They do not run in their everyday plastic prostheses. There are newer generations of Cheetahs, and more innovations on the drawing board, but Oscar cannot switch to anything else without undergoing the same extensive testing that he was put through at Rice University before winning his appeal before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The court approved what he is wearing now, and nothing else. You say that Oscar is more personally adventurous than most professional athletes. You also say he looks awkward on his Cheetahs when he's not running. Do you think it takes a special kind of recklessness to throw your body around a track fast on those things? Balance is a bigger issue for him and for other disabled runners than it is for "normal" runners. It's the biggest challenge in the beginning - getting steady on the Cheetahs. I can't say if any runners have a fear factor on the Cheetahs, but I am sure that Oscar does not. From driving with him - at 155 miles per hour - I can say that he is fearless to the point of reckless. His friends worry about him, and they have cause to. Let's talk for a minute about the controversy about Oscar's participation in "able-bodied" competitions. You describe two scientists at loggerheads on whether it's fair for him to compete, and then Oscar himself says he wouldn't compete if he felt his whole advantage was derived from a piece of apparatus. Is there any definitive way to tell? Would he really stop running if a scientist could prove to his satisfaction that he was no faster than the average high-school track athlete without the Cheetahs? I have enormous admiration for the scientists involved here, but I don't think this is ultimately a question that can be settled by science. It's a cultural question. Should the Olympics and other "able-bodied" competitions be open to amputees? The science, in simplest terms, attempts to compare the real-life Oscar with an imagined, able-bodied Oscar. How fast would he be with biological legs? But of course, no such person exists. If Oscar had legs, he would move differently, would have different physiology, would have a different mental outlook. Peter Weyand, one of the scientists I quote, believes Oscar can cycle his legs faster because the Cheetahs are far lighter than biological lower legs. But how do you weigh that against the disadvantage of having no muscles or feedback in his calves or feet? I do think Oscar would stop running in able-bodied meets if he became convinced he was at an advantage. It's a strange coincidence that the last big eligibility controversy was over another South African runner, Caster Semenya. Did you hear any talk of her case when you were visiting Oscar? I didn't hear talk about Caster Semenya, who was suspended for a time over doubts about her gender, but I agree. Strange coincidence. And some of the issues are similar, in that they go to "sameness" - when in fact we know that there are all these great variations among human beings. One of the scientists you interviewed, Hugh Herr of M.I.T., is exceedingly bullish on prosthetics. You write that he imagines a future of "augmented human beings, guided by internal chips, propelled by battery power." It's clear that the Olympics don't want to go there, but didn't you get the sense from Herr that other nonathletes would be squeamish about going there, too? Yes, many others would be squeamish. I would be squeamish. One of the great things about sport is that it is in some ways primitive, or we want to imagine it is. A line of men, or women, at the start: see who can go fastest in the 100 meters. Or the 26.2 miles of a marathon. These are events that date to the ancient Greek games. I like the hammer throw and pole vault, for the same reason - they look so incredibly primitive. I hated the technological suits in swimming because they violated something so simple: pull on a basic suit that affords a small degree of modesty, jump in the water and go. So while I greatly admire Hugh Herr, I'm not looking forward to Olympic Games that look like Nascar races, though I'm not naïve enough to imagine that each event is not already drenched in technology - from the training methods to the shoes to the running surfaces. Did you talk to Oscar about the possibility of his eligibility being challenged for the Olympics in any detail? Does he dread that sort of investigation or take it in stride? I have never met an elite athlete who was not good at compartmentalizing. To compete at a high level, they must always be in the moment - and that includes each day of training. I don't think a challenge will occur before the Olympics, because his side so soundly defeated the ruling by the I.A.A.F., which was perceived to have conducted a shoddy scientific inquiry. But to the extent any future challenge could be made, I don't think Oscar spends much time worrying about it, because he lives in the present. At a meeting here in the office when the photos first came in, I was pretty surprised by a shirtless, beefcake-type shot of Pistorius. Sprinters are often muscled and big in the arms and torso, but he looked huge. Does extra muscle up top help propel him, or is it all in the hips? Some people have said that the fact that he lacks weight and muscle from the knees down gives him an unfair advantage. Can all that musculature actually make him slower? Well, I didn't see the beefcake photos, but I was there during the photo shoot so I sort of saw it in real time. Sprinting is very much a power event, and the 100- and 200-meter runners are built like N.F.L. defensive backs; they're really ripped. The 400-meter guys tend to be a bit more lean. I agree that Oscar is pretty muscled in the upper body, but I don't know that he is any more so than other 400-meter competitors if you got them in the same poses. It's lean muscle. I think he weighs about 175 pounds, so not that much. I can't imagine that the muscle slows him down any, although like all top runners he does closely monitor his weight. He wants that optimal strength-weight ratio. Does he consider himself "disabled"? I don't think he does, and I never heard him use the term. Near the end of the article, I quote him as saying: "I happen to have no legs. That's pretty much the fact. That's how he sees it. Everyone has challenges; this happens to be his challenge.