Gold medal winner Brazil's Alan Fonteles Cardoso Oliveira, left, embraces silver medalist south Africa's Oscar Pistorius after they ran the men's 200m T44 category final during the athletics competition... (Associated Press) 
 
 Having spent years fighting for the right to race his own blades, Oscar Pistorius is now complaining about a rival's artificial limbs after a stunning loss at the London Paralympics on Sunday. 
 
 The "Blade Runner" had never been beaten over 200 meters in Paralympic competition until Brazilian sprinter Alan Oliveira came storming down the home straight past him to win by 0.07 seconds. 
 
 The icon of the Paralympics had been dethroned and wasn't taking it lightly. 
 
 Pistorius immediately raised concerns with Paralympic officials that Oliveira's surge came through rule-bending blades helping with the late strides. 
 
 Pistorius, who won a legal battle to compete wearing carbon-fiber blades alongside able-bodied runners at the Olympics last month, suggested that Oliveira ran with longer prosthesis than should be allowed. 
 
 Oliveira won gold in 21.45 seconds after overtaking Pistorius at the line at Olympic Stadium in the T44 classification race in front of a capacity 80,000-strong crowd. 
 
 "Not taking away from Alan's performance _ he's a great athlete _ but these guys are a lot taller and you can't compete (with the) stride length," Pistorius said in a broadcast interview. "You saw how far he came back. We aren't racing a fair race. I gave it my best. The IPC (International Paralympic Committee) have their regulations. The regulations (allow) that athletes can make themselves unbelievably high. 
 
 "We've tried to address the issue with them in the weeks up to this and it's just been falling on deaf ears." 
 
 While Pistorius tried to be more magnanimous later, he still claimed it was "ridiculous" that Oliveira could win after being eight meters adrift at the 100-meter mark and deny him a third straight 200 gold. 
 
 "He's never run a 21 second-race and I don't think he's a 21-second athlete," Pistorius said. "I've never lost a 200-meter race in my career." 
 
 The South African double amputee had the support of compatriot Arnu Fourie, who finished fourth and questioned Oliveira's lengthened blades 
 
 "Ask anyone out there _ does it look weird? Does it look out of proportion?" Fourie said. "I think 99 percent of people are going to tell you, `Yes it does.'" 
 
 "If they are within the rules you can't fight the athlete, so you're going to have to fight the formula and fight the rule if we're going to do anything about it." 
 
 Oliveira insisted he had not broken the rules, and expressed disappointment with Pistorius' criticism. 
 
 "He is a really great idol, and to listen to that coming from a really great athlete is really difficult," Oliveira said through a translator. "I don't know who he's picking a fight with, it's not with me." 
 
 The 20-year-old Oliveira was backed by Paralympic leaders. 
 
 "There is a rule in place regarding the length of the blades, which is determined by a formula based on the height and dynamics of the athlete," the IPC said in a statement. "All athletes were measured today prior to competition by a classifier and all were approved for competition." 
 
 Paralympic officials, including the top medical official, agreed to meet with Pistorius after the race. 
 
 "He wanted to voice his concerns and we listened to those concerns," said IPC spokesman Craig Spence, who was at the meeting. "The IPC will meet with Oscar at a later date to discuss his concerns once the emotion of tonight is out of the way." 
 
 The second half of Pistorius' year in London is not running to script. 
 
 At the start of last month, Pistorius reached the 400 semifinals and the 4x400 relay final. Competing at the Olympics was some achievement alone, though the medals were meant to come at the Paralympics. 
 
 But Oliveira could stand in the way of Pistorius and glory for the rest of the games, competing in all of his events. 
 
 Next up is the 4x100 relay on Wednesday before Pistorius defends his titles in the 100 on Thursday and 400 on Saturday. 
 
 Earlier Sunday in the Olympic Stadium, a Ukrainian athlete who was stripped of her Paralympic discus title after an error by scorers was told she would be allowed to keep her gold medal. 
 
 Mariia Pomazan had been relegated to silver after officials said the placings from Friday's F35/36 final were incorrect because an outdated scoring system had been used. China's Wu Qing was promoted to first place. 
 
 However, the IPC that in the "spirit of fair play," Pomazan would be allowed to keep her gold although it would not be added to Ukraine's medal tally. 
 
 She said she was "extremely emotional" and called it an "unforgettable experience." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Rob Harris can be reached at http://twitter.com/RobHarris ||||| The pity was that, ultimately, he could not deliver on the anticipation as he suffered a shock defeat to Brazil’s Alan Oliveira in the final of T43/44 200 metres. 
 
 He was, plainly, furious at the defeat. In a post-race interview he indicated that Oliveira, who prevailed in a time of 21.45 seconds, had the advantage of having longer prosthetic legs. Indeed, he held profound reservations about some of his fellow competitors, pointing out that Oliveira and American Blake Leeper had lengthened their prostheses in pursuit of an advantage. 
 
 “We’re not racing a fair race here," he said immediately after the race. "The regulations say that you can make yourself unbelievably high. I think Alan’s an unbelievable athlete but I don’t think you can come from eight metres behind to win. 
 
 "We've known (about the longer blades) for about a month. I've brought it up with the IPC but nothing's been done about it. I believe in the fairness of sport, I believe in running on the right length." 
 
 Indeed he had raised the issue beforehand as well. "The rules allow them to make themselves longer,” he had said before this final. “If you look at videos from last year, Alan was shorter than me but now he’s taller than me. I don’t take away from their performances. I think they’re great athletes, but it’s clear that these guys have very long strides.” 
 
 This was not a race without its intrinsic flaws. Arnu Fourie, Pistorius’ fellow South African, set a world record of his own in the T44 class and yet never stood a chance of gold. It was the fault of the classification system that Fourie was even competing in the same race as more celebrated compatriot, when his disability – he lost his left leg in a motorboat accident in 2003 – was medically recognised as more severe. 
 
 Pistorius has switched his focus in recent years from shorter distances to the 400m and this display illustrated, despite his fading in the closing stages against the impressive Oliveira, that he had lost little of his talent for the more explosive sprints. In the first half of the race he streaked away from a formidable field that also included Americans Blake Leeper and Jerome Singleton before being overhauled by Oliveira. Only narrowly did Pistorius fail to defend the first of the three golds he has set out to defend from Beijing. 
 
 Grenada’s Kirani Reed, the teenage phenomenon who last month became the Olympic 400m champion, had shown what it meant to share a track with Pistorius by swapping numbers with him after the race. His fellow racers continue to feel disposed to make such gestures after this display. For the 25 year-old continues to redefine what is possible for the Paralympic movement, underlining that these Games are not out for a sympathy vote but simply worthy of acceptance as elite sport. 
 
 Time magazine identified Pistorius in 2008 as one of the world’s 100 most influential people, but by the end of this summer they might be persuaded to improve his ranking. The claim four years ago by Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to claim Everest, that Pistorius has engineered a “paradigm shift, in which disability becomes ability, and disadvantage becomes advantage” has turned out to be prescient after all. 
 
 If his maiden appearance at the Olympics four weeks earlier had felt like an epochal moment, then his first final of the London Paralympics felt no less significant. Pistorius is emblematic of the world’s Paralympians, arguably more recognisable to the British audience than either Dame Tanni-Grey Thompson or Ellie Simmonds. Every time his name was announced via the public address, the fervour of the crowd assumed a higher pitch. 
 
 The Olympic Stadium is becoming the equivalent of his home track. Just 23 days had elapsed since he had anchored his team-mates in the 4x400m relay final, watched by his brother, sister and his 89-year-old grandmother, Omau. Here, they reassembled to watch him inscribe yet more history for the Paralympic cause with which he has become synonymous. 
 
 Pistorius resolutely refuses to choose between the labels of Olympian and Paralympian. Quite rightly, he identifies himself purely and exclusively as an athlete. The manufacturers of his ‘Cheetah’ prostheses claim the artificial limbs are designed to replicate the hind legs of the world’s fastest animal, and it seemed like it last night as Pistorius surged away from his pursuers in the 200m like a man possessed. 
 
 Pistorius had disclosed that the times he was seeing in training excited him, and he was not mistaken. He had run a blistering world record of 21.30sec in training, easing up 20 metres before the finish. Here, he ran through the line only fractionally slower. At his third Paralympics, the pace of his improvement remains remorseless. 
 
 A perfectionist by nature, Pistorius had resolved not to repeat any of the technical errors he made at the Olympics, where he finished last in his 400m semi-final due to what he described as “impatience”. He rededicated himself last night as his ‘running-specific prostheses’, otherwise called Össur Flex-Foot Cheetahs, launched him around the bend of the London track. 
 
 Pistorius had been training ferociously for this moment at his training camp in Gemona, deep in Italy’s Friulian Mountains. The place offered him peace and respite ahead of the delirium of his coronation here. To think, Pistorius has three more events to contest, not least his duel on Wednesday in the 100m with Britain’s Jonnie Peacock. Such is his ambition that he is targeting not merely the defence of the three golds he garnered in China but a fourth, when he represents his nation in the 4x100 relay. 
 
 He was asked last week whether he would ever dare to repeat Usain Bolt’s “I am a legend” assertion, and replied emphatically that he would not. But the rest of the world is rapidly arriving at a different judgment. Even if controversy hung over this rarest of disappointments.
– Oscar Pistorius, one of the most acclaimed Paralympic athletes of all time, suffered a stunning defeat yesterday in the T43/44 200 meters, his first-ever loss in that distance at the Paralympics, reports the Telegraph. Brazil’s Alan Oliveira won with a time of 21.45 seconds, earning accusations from Pistorius (who finished in 21.52) that his prosthetic limbs were too long, and thus violated the International Paralympic Committee's regulations. “We’re not racing a fair race here," Pistorius said right after the race. "The regulations say that you can make yourself unbelievably high." Pistorius said the evidence is in the video, as Oliveira was shorter than him at racing events last year, but now is taller. "Not taking away from Alan's performance—he's a great athlete—but these guys are a lot taller and you can't compete (with the) stride length," said Pistorius. However, the IPC said Oliveira's prosthetics were completely legal, according to the AP. "All athletes were measured today prior to competition by a classifier and all were approved for competition," said the IPC in a statement. Pistorius has since apologized, kind of, via a statement reported by the BBC: "That was Alan's moment and I would like to put on record the respect I have for him. I want to apologize for the timing of my comments but I do believe there is an issue here."