Disabled boy gains inspiration from meeting his Paralympic hero

Adam Donnachie, 11, from Hamilton in South Lanarkshire, who was born with both his lower legs missing, said talking to Pistorius, nicknamed “Blade Runner”, was the “best thing that has ever happened” to him.

The pair met at the University of Strathclyde’s National Centre for Prosthetics and Orthotics, where the Olympic and Paralympic runner was on a visit to tour the facilities and meet patients and staff as well as receive an honorary degree.

His parting words to Adam, who trains four times a week with the Scottish junior disability swim team, were: “I’ll see you in Rio.”

Adam said: “It was the time of my life getting to meet him, a dream come true. He’s my hero because he just never gives up.

“Meeting him was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

“I swim with Scotland just now, we train four times a week, and I’d like to follow in Oscar’s footsteps by going to the Paralympics.

“It’s one of my goals to make it to Rio in 2016.”

The schoolboy’s grandmother, Nina Reeves, 59, said Adam was “stunned into silence” by the meeting with his hero.

“If there was only one person in the world that Adam could meet, he would have chosen Oscar,” she said.

“He’s followed him ever since he came on to the scene.

“I think Oscar was the first person that Adam identified as being just like him – because he has two prosthetic limbs as well, in the same place.

“Most of the people he meets at the clinic only have one, and they are normally a bit older, so he can really relate to Oscar, who is a bit younger.

“I don’t really think we could put into words just how much this means.”

South African Pistorius, 25, who says he now intends to compete in the 400-metre event at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, made history in London this year by becoming the first double leg amputee to compete at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.