Oscar Pistorius' agent is seeking a prison meeting with the double-amputee athlete in the next few days to discuss his career, with South Africa's Olympic committee saying today the runner cannot compete for the full five years of his jail sentence.
The decision of the South African Olympic body matches that of the International Paralympic Committee, which said Pistorius cannot run in its events for five years while serving his sentence for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, even if he is released early to go under house arrest.
Agent Peet van Zyl told The Associated Press that lawyers will meet with Pistorius in prison tomorrow.
After that it will become clearer when Van Zyl and Pistorius' longtime track coach, Ampie Louw, can talk to him about his running future, he said.
"We would like to see the young man," Van Zyl said.
Van Zyl said no discussions have been held over the Olympian and multiple Paralympic champion's track career because Pistorius was taken straight to prison following his sentencing on Tuesday.
Pistorius, once a globally-admired sportsman, was convicted of culpable homicide, or negligent killing, for shooting Steenkamp through a toilet door in his home last year. He was acquitted of murder.
Pistorius' five-year sentence allows for him to be released from prison after completing one-sixth of his term, 10 months, to serve the remainder under correctional supervision, which involves house arrest.
South African Olympic committee chief executive Tubby Reddy told The Associated Press that the 27-year-old Pistorius could not compete for the full duration of that sentence under the body's rules.
The IPC said the same this week, apparently ruling Pistorius out of the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The International Olympic Committee and the IAAF, which controls able-bodied athletics events, have declined to comment on Pistorius' case.
South Africa's sports minister said in a newspaper interview that he believed Pistorius' track career was over.
"The courts have spoken," Fikile Mbalula told the Cape Argus newspaper. "I hear people saying that Pistorius will come back. To me that (the sentencing) was the end of the road."
Yet Pistorius has successfully challenged sports authorities' decisions before.
In 2008, he overturned an IAAF ruling that he wasn't allowed to compete against able-bodied runners on his carbon-fiber blades, and he made history by running at the 2012 London Olympics.
