By Dan Roan – BBC chief sports correspondent
It was in Pretoria when I sat down in a cafe, looked up, and realised I was watching a dedicated 24-hour Oscar Pistorius Trial Channel on the television. Only then did it dawn on me the extent to which South Africa was transfixed by a case that had left an indelible scar on the psyche of an entire nation. Sport is no stranger to fallen idols; OJ Simpson, Hansie Cronje, Lance Armstrong the most obvious. But never perhaps quite like this before. I had travelled to the capital to find out more about Pistorius’ background and the wider significance of the trial that followed the shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Blade Runner. Trail-blazer. Icon. And now, killer. What lay behind what is arguably sport’s most dramatic fall from grace? The feats on the track that turned Pistorius into a household name, disability sport’s first millionaire celebrity, and the symbol of hope that we could all relate to, are already familiar to many of us. The six gold medals over three Paralympic Games, and his ground-breaking crossover into the Olympics, have helped take disability sport from the margins to the mainstream, turning him into the second most feted sportsman at London 2012, after Usain Bolt. Less well known are the forces that shaped a complex character full of contradictions. Pistorius may have been seen as a self-made hero, defying the amputation of both lower legs when still a baby, but his was a childhood of privilege too. He was born into a wealthy Afrikaans Johannesburg family, albeit one traumatised by the death of his mother when he was just a teenager. Pistorius became known as a man of faith, an inspirational role-model, and ultra-dedicated sportsman, but then there was the picture that emerged during his trial – a volatile, hot-tempered and aggressive enigma with an appetite for fast cars, beautiful women and guns.
So who was the real Oscar?
Pistorius won his first of six Olympic gold medals at Athens in 2004 Average South African Schoolboy Few people are as familiar with the origins of this most remarkable of sporting tales as David O’Sullivan, host of the Pistorius TV channel that I watched in Pretoria last month. “I feel sad because we have so few role models in South Africa,” he said when we met in an upmarket neighbourhood of Johannesburg. “We have so few global icons, and he was one of them. He represented the country. But it all got stripped away in an instant.” A local sports journalist, O’Sullivan first met Pistorius in 2003, when the teenager’s astonishing athletic ability emerged. The double amputee had taken up sprinting while at the prestigious Pretoria Boys’ High School. In his very first competitive 100m race for the school, the 17 year-old remarkably smashed the Paralympic world-record over that distance. “He had just recovered from a rugby injury, and had found to his amazement that he had broken the record without really trying,” said O’Sullivan. “He was just a pimply, shy little kid with braces on his teeth. If you looked at his prosthetic legs they were full of bumps and scratches. He was your average South African schoolboy.” Fast-tracked into the South African Paralympic squad, the next year Pistorius had won his first gold medal, in Athens. O’Sullivan closely followed the story of Pistorius’ career, and even advised the young athlete on how to handle the increasing media interest. “We established a relationship at that very early stage and he then asked me to assist him with writing a speech and on the strength of that I really got to know him. “Physically, he grew. It was extraordinary how his confidence increased. He had so much self-belief.” Pistorius had been determined to lead a full and active childhood, despite having both legs amputated below the knee when he was just 11 months old as a result of a congenital defect. As he himself told the BBC in 2012: “There wasn’t much debate in my family. It was like ‘you’ve got prosthetic legs, that’s very nice, your brother’s going to put on his shoes, you put on your legs, and off you go’. That was the mentality I grew up with.” Later, I visited Pretoria Boys’ High School and watched as hundreds of pupils took part in running, rugby and hockey practice on beautifully maintained pitches as far as the eye could see. Pistorius’ name still features on the honours boards that hang inside, but such is the notoriety of their former student, no one from the school would agree to an interview, and access was denied.
