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In sports we have become accustomed to call miracles to facts that are more the product of effort, perseverance and competitiveness than supernatural facts in themselves.
Technically speaking, the so-called records or records when it comes to overcoming previous marks.
In many cases these records have been obscured, especially in the decades after the 70's, by anabolic substances not allowed in the popular jargon called "doping", and the joy for the record and / or the medal achieved has been fixed or diminished by the sanction that has followed.
Who does not remember in athletics the phenomenal records of the Italian Pietro Menea in athletics in the 100 mts or the still enduring 2.45 mts in the high jump of the Cuban Javier Sotomayor, at a time when there were no aerodynamic suits to fight against the force of the air.
Or the recent records of Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton in motor racing.
Not to mention the countless gold medals won in swimming by Michael Phelps or Mark Spitz.
To cite just a few, a few examples.
The Pistorius phenomenon.
But today I want to refer to an athlete who knew how to go beyond these conditions where physics and the law of gravity itself would seem to stop in amazement.
I am talking about the South African Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius, known at the time simply by his last name: Pistorius.
Multiple Paralympic champion and holder of these records:
100 m 10"91 (2007)
200 m 21"30 (2012)
400 m 45"07 (2011)
What's strange about these times?
They were achieved by a legless athlete, nicknamed "the fastest man on no legs".
He ran thanks to a pair of special carbon fiber prosthesis, called cheetah (cheetah).
I was lucky enough to see him run in a demonstration at the Golden Gala in Rome in 2007.
He was impressive. The artificial legs looked like something out of an animated game. It was incredible to think how they could support a 78 kg athlete at full weight and allow him to run faster than any non-professional athlete.
Due to a serious malformation at birth, he suffered the amputation of his legs at the age of 11.
Nevertheless, he was not discouraged and began to play sports. First as a means of rehabilitation and then by choice.
Rugby and water polo saw him participate in the early years. But it was athletics that established him as a formidable athlete at international level.
When in 2012 he achieved his greatest ambition, which was to be able to participate in the London Olympic Games, he declared:
*Today is truly the proudest day of my life. To have been selected to represent the South African team at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the 400m individual and 4×400m relay events is truly an honor and I am very pleased that all these years of hard work, determination and sacrifice have paid off.
On a glorious August 4, 2012, he made history when he qualified for the 400m semifinals.
The decline.
This excessive media pressure, his condition as a mutilated athlete and his fondness for weapons created in Pistorius a paranoid syndrome that would lead him to murder his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, with four shots after having hit her repeatedly with a cricket bat.
The rest is police chronicle. A trial with all the mass media exposure imaginable. Long. Contradictory. Where on the one hand the phenomenal athlete capable of defeating a cruel destiny was on trial.
And on the other hand, a criminal fact that was becoming clearer with the passing of time and was denoting a violent and paranoid attitude unknown until then.
Conviction was inevitable. After several convictions, appeals, reconsiderations, increases and decreases of previous sentences, he was finally sentenced in 2017 to 13 years and 5 months in prison.
Oscar Pistorius rise and fall of an exceptional athlete who knew how to amaze the world with uncommon tenacity and willpower
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Real cool post. I remember how huge his case was in SA.
Cheers!
Thanks for commenting @edprivat, regards.
Sorry to be critical, it's obvious you worked really hard on this post. However, you should really consider NOT lauding a murderer, no matter what he did before he killed a person. Yes his artificial legs were revolutionary, but this does not change what he did... he needs to be forgotten, not honored for what he accomplished before the crime...
I understand your point of view. Actually, the part of the article dedicated to his private life should not be mixed with his sporting side. He won't be the first or the last athlete to end this way: Carlos Monzon and O.J. Simpson have been two examples. The aim of the post was to show the two facets (especially the sporting one) of a person who has had to fight with his demons.