Oscar Pistorius remained well short of his target of achieving a second qualifying time for the London Olympics on Friday.
However, he did manage to reach the final of the 400 metres at the South African Championships.
Although Pistorious has achieved the Olympic qualifying mark before, he needs one more competitive time under 45.30 seconds between now and the Games to qualify.
The 'Blade Runner' clocked 48.24secs to finish second behind Ranti Dekgate in his wind-affected opening heat, and followed that up with a time of 47.91 seconds to finish fourth in his semi-final.
Pistorius, who competes on prosthetic legs, will aim to seal his status as the first amputee athlete to run at the Olympics when he contests Saturday's final at the NMMU Stadium in Port Elizabeth.
Pistorius later wrote on his official Twitter account: "Through to final by the skin of my teeth! Lol ran easy to 300m and paced through. Feel ready and keen for tomorrow."
Elsewhere, Caster Semenya was held up in her bid to clock a second qualifying time for London.
Semenya needs to run inside 1:59.90 in the women's 800m to qualify, but did not have the chance to race on Friday as a raft of withdrawals meant her heat was cancelled and she automatically qualified for Saturday's final.
