The contribution of nonhuman actors is indispensable for sport to produce its winners legitimately. Tracks, lines, fields, starting blocks, javelins, hammers, discuses, balls and rackets are perfectly "natural" elements in sport. They are required for sport to exist; 'Humanity begins with things; animals don't have things'.
However, the interference of nonhumans must be exactly assessed for sport to produce its winners legitimately. A record affected by wind is followed by a wa-asterisk (wind-assisted record) .
The sport columnist Alan Hubbard sketches a scenario that highlights what might have been the outcome for sport if Oscar 'Blade-runner' would have won the 400 m. final during the ongoing world championships in athletics in Daegu, Korea. Eventually, he didn't win but might as well have. Pistorius's unique distribution of energy during the race is foremost noticeable between 200 and 300 m, where and when he is the only known runner to accelerate.
Hubbard speculates that if Pistorius was to break the world-record, perhaps already in the coming Olympics, one would have to introduce a ta-asterisk (technology-assisted record). 'Would those able-bodied rivals who patted him on the back and said "Well done" have reacted in quite the same way had he actually beaten them?', Hubbard rightfully wonders.
By letting Pistorius run, one of the 'modern constitution's' most efficacious apparatuses in producing notion of universal humanness was jeopardized. Indeed we live in times when the intertwinings between thing and man are exponentially increasing in scale and complexity.
Sport has been a central actor in the work of purification, i.e. sorting human from the nonhuman. This has also -- arguably foremost -- been done in order to establish an internal hierarchy among humans.
Oscar Pistorius's participation in regular athletics challenges not only the former record-holders of the 400 m distance, but the whole of the modern constitution!
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