The 25-year-old from South Africa made history last year when he became the first amputee athlete to compete at the able-bodied World Championships in Daegu, where he made the semi-final of the competition.

Pistorius achieved the feat after running a personal best of 45.07sec in the 400 metres at a race in Lignano, Italy last July to better the A standard time of 45.30.

He will need to better the 45.30 mark one more time between now and the end of June in order to qualify for the Olympics and he will begin his European campaign in the Czech Republic at the Golden Spike IAAF World Challenge on May 25, shortly before heading to England for the BT Paralympic World Cup in Manchester.

"I'm in top training currently, all is better than last year," said Pistorius.

"I'm lighter and faster.

"I was little bit nervous last year in Ostrava because it was my first big meet of the year.

"Although it will be the same situation this May, I want to achieve more."


Pistorius (pictured above during last year's race in Ostrava) will line up in Austria against reigning 400m Olympic champion LaShawn Merritt, who will be eligible to defend his title at London 2012 after overturning a ruling in the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) which originally prevented him competing in at the Games due to his ban for failing a doping test.

But Pistorius is focused solely on himself and believes that making it to the London 2012 Olympics is a realistic goal.

"I am very confident, but I think although I'm optimistic, I'm also a realist," he said.

"There's a lot of hard work that's got to go in over the next two or three months for pre-season.

"If I run two A qualification times [of better than 45.25], it's kind of like an automatic qualification.

"So my goal would be to run an A qualification time somewhere during the period between March to the cut-off date at the end of June."

Pistorius added that he is confident he can still do well at the Paralympics even if he qualifies for the Olympics despite the fact that the Paralympics take place less than three weeks later.

While Pistorius is expected to focus on the 400m individual and 4x400m relay events at the Olympics, he will compete in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 4x100m relay events at the Paralympics.

"The challenge of doing both the Olympic and Paralympic Games is pretty tremendous," he said.

"Being able to stay on peak and qualify, you know, a month or two months out before the Olympics and then still maintain the high level of competition for the Paralympics is going to be very demanding.

"The 100m is definitely one of the events that I'm going to struggle with at the London Paralympic Games.

"It's a very close event and if you have one foot placing that goes off, or you're not explosive enough on the start, or your driving phase on the first 30 metres isn't good enough, you're not going to cut it by the end of that 100m.

"So it's very exciting and very nerve racking and losing a race, I think, makes me a bit more hungry coming into this year."

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