Oscar Pistorius of South Africa does have an advantage over his amputee counterparts. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

The scene is Beijing's Olympic (Bird's Nest) Stadium with eight sprinters crouched into the starting blocks for the T44 100-metre final.

The runners are all wearing artificial legs made of carbon graphite formed into a C-shape. It is the latest version of the Flex Foot, which was invented by American Van Philips almost a quarter century ago. The sprinting version has become known as the Cheetah.

But one of the eight runners is different. Oscar Pistorius is wearing two artificial legs. At first glance it would appear that the South African is at a disadvantage considering he has two legs that are not his own. And when the gun fires that theory looks to be accurate.

At the 30-metre mark, Pistorius is almost five metres behind a trio of Americans including two-time defending champion, Marlon Shirley. However, tragedy strikes Shirley at about 60 metres when his achilles tendon gives out and he tumbles to the track in pain. But the path is not yet clear for the Pretoria Predator.

Pistorius, although rapidly gaining, is still behind the youngest of the American challengers, Jerome Singleton. Singleton, the 22-year-old honour student from North Carolina said afterwards that, "I knew if I saw Oscar it was over."

I'm not sure if he ever saw Pistorius but in a flash, it was over.

Pistorius passed him with two metres remaining to win in 11.17 seconds, beating Singleton by just 3/100ths of a second. So, what's with all of this talk about an unfair advantage and whether Pistorius could compete against able-bodied athletes? Anyone who watched this race saw that he had his hands full against fellow amputees, let alone the best able-bodied runners on the planet.

Here is the situation as I see it.

Oscar clearly has a disadvantage over able-bodied runners (and even single leg amputees) when he comes out of the blocks because he cannot get into an optimum position of power.

An able-bodied sprinter can bend his ankle to push away from the starting blocks in what is called the drive phase. But Pistorius' prosthetics must be fixed into a certain alignment, so he gives up that power at the start hoping to make up for it later on.

Once he gets into a full-stride pattern, Pistorius gets rolling and has a much different — and more uniformed — cadence than his fellow amputees who are trying to make the prosthetic limb imitate the movement of their "sound" limb.

Both of Pistorius' feet give back relatively the same amount of energy and so he has much less of a gallop than the other amputees. Therefore, from 30 metres and beyond, Pistorius now has an advantage over other amputee runners. That advantage will become even more pronounced in the 200 and 400 races here in Beijing.

Philips said recently that, "the Cheetah may be more advantageous than the human foot...carbon graphite may be more energy efficient."

But he still believes that Pistorius should be allowed to race with able-bodied athletes because of all of the other factors that might slow him down, like the inefficiencies of the foot's attachment to the athlete's limb, as well as the amputee's limited knee flexion.

The bottom line is that with the current technology, Pistorius does have an advantage over his amputee counterparts. But so what? I believe that in time, another development will come along to help the single leg amputee bridge the gap. Until then the battle may simply be for silver and bronze.

But isn't that the case with the men's sprint races at the Olympics too. Jamaican Usain Bolt has obvious physical advantages over his rivals. He is about six inches taller than most of his competitors with a stride length to match. He used that advantage to win three gold medals here in Beijing.

Pistorius is poised to do the same at the Paralympics and regardless of his advantage, he will try again to qualify for the Olympics in London in four years time.