I don't want to be competing in a sport where I feel that I'm here not on my talent and my hard work but because of a piece of equipment.

I want to wake up every day and feel that I'm training harder than my competitors, that I'm dieting harder, that I'm recovering better. That's what gives me confidence when I'm lining up on the blocks. I've never gone out to prove people wrong. I just want to be the best that I can possibly be.

Oscar Pistorius is on the cusp of a paradigm shift in which disability becomes ability, disadvantage becomes advantage. Yet we mustn't lose sight of what makes an athlete great. It's too easy to credit Pistorius' success to technology. Through birth or circumstance, some are given certain gifts, but it's what one does with those gifts, the hours devoted to training, the desire to be the best, that is at the true heart of a champion.

I don't want to be competing in a sport where I feel that I'm here not on my talent and my hard work but because of a piece of equipment.

To have been selected to represent Team South Africa at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the individual 400m and the 4x400m relay is a real honor and I am so pleased that years of hard work, determination and sacrifice have all come together.

I don't see myself as disabled. There's nothing I can't do that able-bodied athletes can do.

The more I accomplish, the more pressure I put on myself.