by Mandy Wiener
The IPC responded by confirming that no rules had been broken. ‘There is a rule in place regarding the length of the blades which is determined by a formula based on the height and dynamics of the athlete. All athletes were measured today prior to competition by a classifier and all were approved for competition,’ said a spokesperson for the Committee.
The young Brazilian said he was ‘disappointed’ by the claims from Oscar. ‘Pistorius is a great athlete. The interview when he said my blades were too big, he was bothered by the time I had in the semi-finals and wanted to get to me with this polemic. But it did not work. I don’t know with whom he’s picking a fight, it’s not with me,’ he said. ‘For me he is a really great idol. And to hear that coming from a really great idol is difficult.’
British media were saturated with coverage of Oscar’s comments and much of it was negative, with critics questioning his eruption in the face of a rare loss. The morning after the race, Oscar published an apology – he was not sorry for what he said, but rather for the timing of his comments.
‘I would never want to detract from another athlete’s moment of triumph and I want to apologise for the timing of my comments after yesterday’s race. I do believe that there is an issue here and I welcome the opportunity to discuss with the IPC but I accept that raising these concerns immediately as I stepped off the track was wrong. That was Alan’s moment and I would like to put on record the respect I have for him. I am a proud Paralympian and believe in the fairness of sport. I am happy to work with the IPC who obviously share these aims.’
Oscar also tweeted his congratulations to Oliveira and thanked the crowd for their support:
Congratulating Alan of Brazil for his 200m win.. The fastest last 80m I have ever seen to take it on the line. pic!
But a degree of damage had been done to Oscar’s poster-boy image and a seed of doubt about his character had been planted in the minds of some.
‘Pistorius had never lost a 200 metres race before, and he could not believe that it had happened. Modest as he may seem – at the start line he responded to the adoring applause of the 80 000 with a polite little bow – he has, like any champion, a sizeable temper and an ego to match,’ wrote Andy Bull in The Guardian about the incident.
But Oscar was more determined than ever and wanted to reclaim his status as the premier Paralympic sprinter in the world. Motivated, he came out for the 4x100 metres relay with the South African team with the aim of not only taking the title but also breaking their own world record. Oscar anchored the team, which successfully achieved its goal, taking over seven-tenths of a second off their previous record.
The mixed zone at the Olympic Stadium in London was the one area where nothing was off the record. It’s a vast area under the main grandstand, just beyond the finish line of the athletics track and where the Paralympic athletes faced the media for the first time after their competition. The mixed zone provided a more informal meeting place than an official news conference, though access was strictly controlled by team media officers, and a waist-high barrier separates journalist from athlete.
The evening of 6 September 2012 was hot and sticky, the atmosphere at the stadium even more charged than usual. The evening’s penultimate race was the men’s 100 metres for double- and single-leg amputees and it was won in a Games record time by one of the darlings of the British Paralympic movement, Jonnie Peacock. Oscar had finished fourth behind fellow South African and roommate Arnu Fourie.
Oscar had anticipated finishing outside the medals in this event, as he had long since stopped training for the shorter distance. It was the first time he had been in action since his criticism three days earlier of Brazilian sprinter Alan Oliveira’s long running blades. The comments had cast something of a pall over the poster boy of the Paralympic Games, and Oscar knew he had to make amends.
He might have overdone his enthusiasm by saying the race was the best he had ever competed in, but his praise for Peacock and his genuine excitement for Fourie’s bronze medal achievement was helping to restore his Paralympic image.
As usual that evening, Oscar was besieged by the media. He was always in high demand, but that evening the journalists were clamouring for a follow-up to the Oliveira controversy. And Oscar did not disappoint. He worked the media like the professional he had become – not turning down a single interview and making his way slowly through the various countries’ TV crews, answering all their questions. Oscar always took a long time moving through the mixed zone.
While he was charming a global TV audience, Fourie – who was not in as much demand from the foreign journalists – had completed his interviews with the South African TV crews and had made his way to a group of five South African radio and print journalists.
He spoke to them excitedly about the race, and it wasn’t long before some of the journalists went off to file their stories for the morning. Broadcaster David O’Sullivan was, however, keen to record an interview with both Fourie and Oscar, so O’Sullivan and Fourie remained in the mixed zone, continuing to talk while waiting for Oscar to finish his TV commitments.
O’Sullivan asked Fourie what it was like to be Oscar’s roommate. He thought it was an innocuous question, aimed more at passing the time, but Fourie’s response took him by surprise. Fourie let on that he had moved out of their tiny room in the Paralympic village because Oscar was always fighting with and shouting at people on the phone.
O’Sullivan was taken aback. He had expected to hear how they might motivate each other, sit and chat about their strategies – he certainly didn’t expect to hear that Oscar was being distracted by fights and arguments with people on the other end of a telephone line.
Neither O’Sullivan nor Fourie pursued the conversation any further as Oscar arrived shortly afterwards and the discussion went back to the evening’s earlier race. But Fourie’s comment lingered with O’Sullivan and, as he travelled back to his hotel that night, he listened back to Fourie’s almost throwaway remark on his recorder. It struck him as incongruous that, at the height of his fame, on his biggest stage, with so much glory beckoning, Oscar should be embroiled in arguments on the phone. Why does he allow himself to be so badly distracted? thought O’Sullivan. Surely he had bigger things to deal with?
Some 18 months later, O’Sullivan recalled the incident in an article he wrote for the Sunday Telegraph detailing his encounters with Pistorius over a period of almost nine years:
At the London Games, I was chatting to Oscar’s roommate in the Athletes’ Village, Arnu Fourie, who had just won the bronze medal in the 100 m, edging his good friend Oscar out of the medals. Oscar was genuinely elated at his mate’s success. They were obviously very close and I asked Fourie what it was like rooming with Oscar. He told me he had been forced to move out, because Oscar was constantly screaming in anger at people on the phone. I thought Fourie was joking and waited for him to smile. But he was serious. I was taken aback. I had never thought of Oscar behaving like that. I realised he was more complex than I had thought.
O’Sullivan first met Oscar in September 2004 while doing a broadcast for Talk Radio 702 to welcome home the South African Olympic swimmers who had won gold in Athens. ‘Because I have a passion for the Paralympics, I asked if Fanie Lombard could also come along so that we could throw forward to the upcoming Athens Paralympic Games. Fanie couldn’t make it, and the team’s media officer suggested that she bring a newcomer along for the interview instead. I thought she said his name was Oscar Pretorius, and introduced him as such in a throw-forward to his interview.
‘When he sat down during the ad break, he very politely corrected me. I didn’t know what his disability was, and he pulled up his pants legs to show me his prosthetics. I remember him being a very quiet schoolboy with slight acne and braces on his teeth. He could have been mistaken for being shy, because he was quiet and unassuming, but as soon as the interview started, I realised he had confidence that belied his age. I liked him immediately.’
The broadcaster says
that Oscar struck him as being very normal and humble in the early days of his career. ‘After Oscar came back from the Paralympics with a couple of medals and world records, he started being noticed. He was in demand for motivational speaking and asked me to help him write a speech. I sat with him for a couple of days going through his family history. I heard none of the stuff that has been revealed in court. When I look back on my notes, he painted a picture of a very normal upbringing, enjoying school life, not ever experiencing disadvantages because of his disability. He told me stories that were so typical of your average Pretoria schoolboy, riding motorbikes, playing in the veld, getting up to mischief. Over the years, I watched Oscar grow in confidence and stature, but he always remained the same person towards me – unassuming, quiet, respectful.’
He saw no signs that Oscar was troubled or was destined to implode. ‘I only ever heard stories – the motorboat crash, tantrums he would throw with SABC producers. He once phoned me from Beijing just before the 2008 Paralympic Games, complaining about their training kit. But I thought he was quite justified in moaning – the kit was late and he had work to do.’
Former CNN sports broadcaster Graeme Joffe says that warning signs did begin to appear, but no one wanted to acknowledge them.
‘I met this incredible, humble kid, the drive, the positiveness. I was in awe of him. It was the real Oscar. Then, sadly over the years, I think, as fame and success and money came into his life, I saw a very different Oscar,’ Joffe told a BBC television documentary in the weeks after Oscar’s arrest. ‘So many incidents have happened, and they’ve been well documented over the last five or six years … Here, I think, you had a troubled athlete. Not so much this incredible role model for the rest of the world – no question about that – but deep down, this was a troubled athlete,’ Joffe elaborated to CNN. Joffe, like many others, had noticed Oscar beginning to change over the years.
With fame and the global stage, Oscar had developed a taste for the fast life, which The New York Times pointed out was not an uncommon attribute of successful, competitive athletes. Writer Michael Sokolove spent time with the Blade Runner at his Pretoria home:
Pistorius is, as well, blessed with an uncommon temperament – a fierce, even frenzied need to take on the world at maximum speed and with minimum caution. It is an athlete’s disposition, that of a person who believes himself to be royalty of a certain kind – a prince of the physical world.
In his article, Sokolove wrote about Oscar’s erratic and high-speed driving, as well as his appetite for risk, mentioning that at one point the car’s speedometer clocked 250 km/h while the athlete was at the wheel:
Hanging out with Pistorius can be a great deal of fun. You also quickly understand that he is more than a little crazy … The people around Pistorius worry about his risk-taking, but there’s only so much they can do. His manager, Peet van Zyl, shrugged when I asked him about it. ‘It’s the nature of the man,’ he said. ‘At least we did get the motorbike away from him.’
Oscar’s penchant for firearms and his acute awareness of his own security was clear for Sokolove:
As he put together lunch for all of us — fruit smoothies, breaded chicken fillets he pulled from the refrigerator — he mentioned that a security alarm in the house had gone off the previous night, and he had grabbed his gun and tiptoed downstairs. (It turned out to be nothing.)
I asked what kind of gun he owned, which he seemed to take as an indication of my broader interest in firearms. I had to tell him I didn’t own any. ‘But you’ve shot one, right?’ Actually, I hadn’t. Suddenly, I felt like one of those characters in a movie who must be schooled on how to be more manly.
‘We should go to the range,’ he said. He fetched his 9-millimeter handgun and two boxes of ammunition. We got back in the car and drove to a nearby firing range, where he instructed me on proper technique. Pistorius was a good coach. A couple of my shots got close to the bull’seye, which delighted him. ‘Maybe you should do this more,’ he said. ‘If you practised, I think you could be pretty deadly.’ I asked him how often he came to the range. ‘Just sometimes when I can’t sleep,’ he said.
Jonathan McEvoy from The Daily Mail also visited Oscar at his home in the secure Silver Woods estate and noted his jumpiness at threats to his security:
In Oscar’s bedroom lay one cricket bat and one baseball bat behind the door, a revolver by his bed and a machine gun by the window.
In this vast and beautiful land of post-apartheid South Africa there is too often a gun at the end of their Rainbow.
In 2011, the year I visited Oscar, there were 7,039 reported home invasion robberies in the Gauteng Province alone – the area that covers Johannesburg and Pretoria, the cities in which he was born and lived.
Yes, he is hidden away on the Silver Woods estate on the eastern outskirts of Pretoria and is protected by armed guards round the clock, but as he told me: ‘The problem is when the guards are in on the crime. It’s usually safe in guarded estates like this until that happens.’
Like Sokolove, McEvoy also experienced Oscar’s wild driving when he drove him to the airport in his BMW ‘fitted with all manner of go-faster gadgets’ and ‘tyres screeching as he rounded corners like a man possessed’.
Months after the Valentine’s Day shooting, writer Jonny Steinberg recounted another telling and little-known allegation involving Oscar and his gun in The Guardian newspaper:
A couple of years ago, two journalist friends of mine spent an afternoon with Oscar Pistorius. For much of the time, they recall, Oscar was quiet and self-contained. And then, apropos of nothing, he told a story. He was driving on the outskirts of a black township, he said, when a dog ran under his wheels. In his rear-view mirror, he watched as it dragged itself off the road by its front legs, its hind legs useless to it now. Its back was clearly broken. He stopped and got out of his car to find that the dog’s owner had come out on to the street, shouting, cursing, gesticulating. What to do? Oscar grabbed his gun, shot the dog through the back of the head and drove off.
After the Olympic Games and the success of 2012, Oscar ordered himself a R3.5-million McLaren mp4-12c Spider. Life was good. He had an estimated R17 million in endorsements from various global brands including Nike, Oakley, Thierry Mugler and British telecommunications company BT. He was revelling in the lifestyle that success had brought him.
In his personal life, Oscar was again involved in a passionate and turbulent relationship with a blonde beauty. He had been seeing Johannesburg student Samantha Taylor, whom he had met at a rugby game in 2010. The two had got to know each other over time and began dating in September 2011. However, during the Olympics, while Oscar was in London, the couple broke up. But when he returned to South Africa in September 2012, they reignited their relationship. ‘Upon his return from London he begged me to go out with him again and said he would get a psychologist for us to make our relationship work,’ claims Taylor in an affidavit deposed for the purposes of Oscar’s murder trial. She would also go into extensive detail about their relationship in an interview with us.
In November 2012 the couple fell out again during a trip to Sun City. ‘We were fighting about him being rude to me,’ explained Taylor in the affidavit. They were meant to go to Durban together but didn’t. While they were on a break, the marketing student said she realised the relationship was over when she saw her boyfriend at the South African Sports Awards with model Reeva Steenkamp.
In the affidavit signed by Taylor, she gave insight into her relationship with Oscar, his mood swings, drinking and enthusiasm for guns:
He one night got intoxicated at home and fell hurting his lip. This was when we had a get together. When everyone left and we went to bed he became abusive saying ‘You bitch’ several times accusing me of hitting him. The next day he could not remember the incident. He often used alcohol and became intoxicated when in his ‘off season’.
He liked firearms and while in Las Vegas (2012) he told me that he was going to gunshops. This also
happened when he was in London for the Olympics. I often went to the range with him (in Pretoria). He was a firearm enthusiast. Once after being stopped by traffic police he fired out the car because of anger. (this was in ±September 2012). He only fired one shot.
He had many mood swings, turning from friendly to aggressive in an instant. He also cried a lot when he knew that he was wrong in our relationship. He was extremely jealous, possessive and obsessive about me.
After news of Reeva Steenkamp’s death broke, Taylor’s mother posted on Facebook: ‘I am so glad that Sammy is safe and sound, and out of the clutches of that man. There were a few occasions where things could have gone wrong with her and his gun during the time they dated.’
It was over Samantha Taylor that Oscar became embroiled in a heated altercation with former professional soccer player Marc Batchelor.
With his peroxide hair, dubious friends and elaborate tattoos, Batchelor’s reputation precedes him. ‘Batch’, as the ex-SuperSport presenter is known, moves in the same circles as well-known underworld figure and hired hit man Mikey Schultz – a circle that is not fond of Oscar Pistorius. Batchelor’s friends also refer to him as ‘The Sherriff’ due to his eagerness to take care of their problems, at times with what appears to be a little too much enthusiasm.
So it was that Batchelor became embroiled in the dispute between his friend Clifton Shores producer and mining multimillionaire Quinton van der Burgh and the Blade Runner.
Batchelor had seen Oscar around at charity events but the two men had never got on. ‘He was arrogant from then,’ says Batchelor. ‘He was always looking for accolades. And, you know, when the room is full of ex-sportsmen and there are celebs everywhere, I mean why must he always make an entrance?’
