— LONDON – As he left Olympic Stadium, Oscar Pistorius stopped for a moment and looked back.

The double-amputee runner turned to take in the crowd of 80,000 and reflect on his victory in a four-year fight to compete at the London Games against the world’s best able-bodied athletes.

“It’s something I will definitely remember for the rest of my life,” Pistorius told The Associated Press on Saturday, thinking back to his debut on the biggest track stage in the world.

In a few weeks, the South African will be back at the same stadium on his carbon-fiber blades for the Paralympics which run Aug. 29-Sept. 9. He won’t be a sideshow. He’ll be the main attraction.

Pistorius is the defending champion in the 100, 200 and 400 meters – and he’ll be expected to win four gold medals this time. He also will be on South Africa’s 4x100 relay team.

The Paralympics will also have a local flavor as former Warner Lady Eagle Cassie Mitchell will participate in the wheelchair 100 and 200 meters as well as the discus, the only USA athlete who will compete in both track and field events in London.

Now living in Atlanta, Mitchell was a member of Warner’s 1998 cross country state championship team and was on running track at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo., where she would also be a pre-med major.

That was until that summer morning, just weeks after her high school graduation.

“My legs wouldn’t move,” she said.

Nor would they again.

The sudden strike came from a condition known as Neuromyelitis Optica or Devic’s Disease, an auto-immune, inflammatory disease of the central nervous system in which there are episodes of inflammation and damage to the myelin (fatty, protective covering of nerves) that almost exclusively affect the optic (eye) nerves and spinal cord.

Now, Mitchell now serves as a research faculty member in the Coulter Department at Georgia Tech where she received her Ph.D. biomedical engineering.

One wonders what she could inspire in her 20 undergraduate students at Georgia Tech. A cure for cancer? A cure for what ails her?

“I’m not one to say if someone comes in with a cold and doesn’t feel like they’re up to their work, that hey, look at what I’ve overcome, too bad for you, get over it,” she said. “That’s not really what matters. That’s little stuff.

“If I encourage them in anything it’s to go for what you want to accomplish. I think everyone has natural God-given abilities, an inner drive if you will, that’s a blessing from God. Everyone has it in some form. You just have to apply it.”