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Johannesburg - Double amputee Oscar Pistorius will look to go even faster after he qualified for the World Athletics Championships in Lignano, Italy on Tuesday night.
Pistorius' coach, Ampie Louw, said on Wednesday the 24-year-old would need to reassess his goals after taking 0.54 seconds off his personal best with a 45.07 victory in the men's 400m sprint.
"From day one our goal was for him to run the 400m in 45 seconds flat," Louw said.
"In reaching that goal he now needs to run a sub-45 seconds race."
Louw admitted Pistorius would need to improve significantly in order to progress through the heats at the global championships in Daegu, South Korea next month.
"To reach the final he would need to run the 400m in 44 seconds," he said.
Pistorius, set to become the first amputee sprinter to compete at the world championships, had struggled repeatedly to reach the qualifying standard for global competitions after winning a case at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in May 2008 that cleared him to run against able bodied athletes.
Having failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympic Games later the same year, and the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin, Pistorius shifted his focus to next year's London Olympics.
Pistorius, who improved the A-qualifying standard by 0.18 seconds in Lignano, would need to reproduce that performance next season, however, to reach his ultimate goal.
South Africa's Olympic qualifying period would open only later this year, according to Louw.
"Next year he would have to qualify once again," said Louw.
An emotional Louw said the enormity of Pistorius' achievement had only sunk in after he had told his wife that his charge had qualified.
"I shed a tear because we have come a long way in reaching this point," he said.
Lebogang Moeng, who set the B-qualifying standard after clocking 45.47 in Durban in April, was the only men's 400m athlete included in South Africa's provisional squad for the world championships named earlier on Tuesday.
National 400m hurdles record holder LJ van Zyl also qualified in the flat 400m but said he would focus on his specialist event in Daegu.
Pistorius, however, was guaranteed a place in the final squad, expected to be named by August 8.
Louw said Pistorius would spend some time in Italy in the hopes of avoiding the limelight back home before he began final preparations in his build-up to the World Championships.
Pistorius' time in Lignano was only 0.48 seconds off the South African 400m record jointly held by Arnaud Malherbe and Hendrick Mokganyetsi.
It also bumped him up to 15th in this year's world rankings in his event.
