Earle Connor admits he felt a tinge of jealousy when Oscar Pistorius - wearing two prosthetic legs - raced at this year's London Olympics.
"Absolutely. I'll be the first one to say it," says Connor, the one-legged sprinter who is shooting for a third Paralympic gold medal in London.
"It's the highest level of competition a human being can get to. But I'm missing my entire leg on the left side, and I understand there are avenues I can't quite get to. But it was sure fun to watch."
Connor, an above-knee amputee who grew up in Dalmeny, holds the world sprint record of 12.14 seconds. He retired after winning gold at the 2008 Games in Beijing, but noticed as the next three years slipped by that nobody had come close to his old standard.
An evening chat with coach Les Gramantik late last summer awoke his desire to run again, and Connor fished his long-neglected sprint leg out of storage. He hadn't worn it since he retired.
"The same foot, knee, frame, socket, the whole ball of wax," said Connor, 36. "I was most nervous about whether it would still fit. My physique changed a bit, but the weight stayed exactly the same. It slid on and we began the journey."
Connor's story is liberally sprinkled with peaks and valleys - from gold medals at the 2000 and 2008 Paralympics, to his two-year drug-related suspension on the eve of the 2004 Games.
A random test showed trace amounts of testosterone and nandralone, and Connor admitted he'd been using a prescribed testosterone patch which helped him deal with cancer-related removal of a testicle in 2001. But he hadn't submitted a medical exemption form, and the positive test threw his career into limbo.
Connor launched a comeback for the 2008 Games in Beijing, then retired so he could run a nutrition business in Cochrane, Alta.
Now he's back - and he still thinks he has what it takes to be world's fastest above-knee amputee. When he started the second comeback, his time came in at 13.45 seconds. But he's since worked it up to 12.45.
"In the beginning, my peers and opponents were a little skeptical about whether or not I would even make the final," he says now.
"A lot of people who run against me, (the recent resurgence) reaffirmed their worst nightmares - that I'm back pretty close to where I left off."
So close, in fact, that he believes there's a good chance for a third gold medal. Connor says his two layoffs might have provided long-term benefits by reducing wear on his body. Amputee sprinters absorb an extra pounding, he says, because one side of the body "takes the entire load."
He's feeling so confident, in fact, that he also talks about competing at the 2016 Paralympics.
And if he does capture gold this year in London, Connor hopes that serves as a springboard into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.
"It would be 10-fold to anything in sport I've ever done," Connor said. "The fact that I've taken three years away, then re-vaulted myself back into being the best in the world - not to sound odd, but I think it would be a credit to my athleticism and to who I am in my sport. I've always said I want to leave something in my sport when I close the books, and one of my goals is to get into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, after everything I've been through. Doing that would reaffirm who I am in the culture of sport in this country, especially in disabled sport. It would mean so, so much to me."
Connor says his latest journey hasn't been easy. He's not just a full-time athlete anymore - he has a business, and a wife, and a baby on the way.
"By far, this has been the hardest and most difficult thing I've had to do in sport," Connor said. "This is the top of the difficulty level. But I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think I was going to win. That's always been my expectation and goal, but I also didn't think it was going to be this hard."
As for Pistorius, Connor says the Olympian accomplishment of his South African friend has been a boon to the Paralympics movement.
Connor hopes more Paralympic athletes get a shot at the Olympics in the future, provided they don't get extra advantages not available to able-bodied athletes.
"It has to be on a per-person basis," Connor said. "You don't want someone with a completely mechanical shoulder throwing the javelin or shot-put, or a long jumper using a prosthetic foot. Case by case, it has to be done very carefully. But I also think it's done the Paralympic movement a world of good, and he needs to be applauded for running not just on the able-bodied circuit, but on our disabled circuit.
"Disabled kids, people with missing legs and arms, know there's an option for them - not just to run in the Paralympics, but to be healthy. I don't think any prosthetic company could have ever purchased the amount of excitement he's provided to the entire disabled movement. It's been completely invaluable."
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