Oscar Pistorius & The South African Sports Star Curse

By Paul Stevens

Is there a curse over South African sports stars? It seems so. This lengthy article traces the fluctuating fortunes of four huge South African sports icons: Paralympic multiple gold medalist Oscar Pistorius,  Proteas cricket captain Hansie Cronje, Springbok rugby captain Joost van der Westhuizen and the national Soccer team captain Senzo Meyiwa. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Stevens
• Release date: Feb 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781502290175

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Oscar Pistorius & The South African Sports Star Curse

All rights reserved © 2013 Paul Stevens

Contents

Oscar Pistorius  ●  Hansie Cronje ● Joost van der Westhuizen ● Senzo Meyiwa ● Also by this Author

1 – Oscar Pistorius

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Are you married and do you have kids? Even if you aren’t, imagine you are and do, and bear with me for a moment. Let’s suppose you are invited to a friend’s house and he is an accomplished pianist and has a baby grand Steinway model S piano in his living room. Whilst you are engrossed in conversation with your friend your son, aged 13, walks up to the piano, opens the lid, sits down and without further ado launches into a flawless rendition of a  classical piece on the piano. Or let’s say your daughter, aged 12, comes with you to a special occasion at an up market French restaurant, and to help make choices from the baffling menu she starts a lengthy conversation with the waiter in good French. Now the thing is, you have never arranged for your son to have piano lessons nor for your daughter to have French lessons, ever.  Your son’s astonishing prowess on the piano and your daughter’s eagle ear for French is complete news to you. Wouldn’t that be amazing or beyond belief?

Well for Henk Pistorius, Oscar’s father, there was indeed such an amazing day though the field was in fact a real field. Mrs. Miller, a teacher at his school, Pretoria Boys High, for some reason had insisted on entering Oscar in a 100 meter school race in January, 2004. For this she had to get special permission, as no one had ever run in a race before with prostheses in place of both legs. The organizers were hesitant and reluctant at first to allow this, as clearly the lad would come last and be completely humiliated. Henk, who had always been there 100% for his family, enthusiastically supported the idea and was there on the day to cheer his son on.

Oscar Pistorius, the man

The result was astonishing. Running on cumbersome heavy prostheses which weighed 3 kilograms each Oscar blitzed the field and won the race in a blistering time of 11.50 seconds. Oscar had really thought nothing of it, but when they got home that night his father was beside himself with pride and called all his friends telling them to phone Oscar and congratulate him. Whilst his son’s phone was ringing non stop, Henk got onto the internet to research the times that other disabled athletes were doing. In fact at that point, they had never even heard of the Paralympics. Henk discovered that there are two categories of amputees, T44 where one leg had been amputated and a T43 where both legs had been amputated. He then proceeded to look up what the best times over 100 meters were for these athletes. Henk stopped and stared at what was displayed on the laptop screen. Cold shivers ran up and down his spine. Oscar, come here, he called urgently for his son. Because what he had just discovered was that his son, had not only run a brilliant time for the 100 meters without any real training for it, in fact he had done it in a better time than the existing world record! Oscar had actually clocked in at 11.72 seconds and the existing T43 world record time was 12.20 seconds. Without any fuss or bother Oscar had clipped half a second off the official world record on his very first outing!

Oscar was born with Fibula Hemimelia (congenital absence of the fibula) in both legs. The two bones in the leg below the knee are known as the Tibia and the Fibula. The Tibia, which is the larger and stronger, connects the knee with the ankle bones. The fibula (or calf bone) is a leg bone located on the lateral side of the tibia, with which it is connected above and below. In proportion to its length, it is the slenderest of all the long bones.

Fibula & Tibia Leg Bones

In addition to this, both feet were malformed. Each foot only had two toes, the big toe and the index toe, the inner bones and the heel.

Oscar’s parents were faced with an agonizing dilemma. It was possible that the one leg could possibly be reconstructed to a point but with no guarantees, but the other leg had to be amputated. At this time there was no internet and the family had to do research by phone and fax and got conflicting opinions from 11 amputation surgeons. Finally they managed to get his case presented at an international amputation conference in America. The consensus opinion was that both legs should be amputated below the knee before he even learned to walk. That way he would grow up completely without experiencing the devastating loss of a limb and develop mobility and agility on his stumps and prostheses.  At the age of 11 months he had his legs amputated below the knee. Post op the toddler lay screaming in agony in the ward as the nursing staff hadn’t given the little boy the adequate analgesics as proscribed by the surgeon, Dr. Gerry Versveld, who rushed to hospital in his pajamas to administer them.

Oscar got his first pair of prostheses at 17 months. In his book Blade Runner there is a heart rending picture of him as a blonde little lad wearing crude prostheses. Whichever way you spin it, he had been dealt a truly rotten hand of cards. 

As he grew up his heavy prostheses made out of glass fiber and plaster of paris, with a wooden foot and a rubber sole had to be replaced every few months, exactly the same way as a child constantly grew out of his clothes. All along, he had to contend with extremely painful blisters and sores developing on his stumps from the friction caused by his prostheses, which meant there were periods when he couldn’t even go to school for months on end.. As an athlete, this became even more of a problem. One is humbled enough by his achievements alone but these are even more significant if one understands that he could have faced further amputation at any stage.  The surgeon purposefully amputated his legs as far as possible below the knee to actually allow for this. He also had to contend with neurofibromatosis, a disorder of the nervous system which causes benign tumors.

Yet because he had grown up with this disability he developed surprising mobility purely on his stumps. Up to the age of 12 he easily beat other boys in races organized by his father just running on his stumps. But from 12 onwards his growing weight became too much for his stumps to bear and he had to resort to his prostheses and to help minimize the friction from these he had skin from his heels grafted over his stumps.

His overall mobility on his prostheses was also amazing. At school he played tennis, cricket, water polo and was also passionate about wrestling for which he won a medal at 12 years of age. He even played rugby on the wing for his school third team. The wing is the fastest runner on the field. It was almost as if he didn’t need real legs.

His progress after that first race was meteoric. In June 2004 he flew to the US to try out the J shaped carbon-fiber prosthetics called the Flex-Foot Cheetah manufactured by  Össur which is headquartered in Iceland. The blades, which simulate the running motion of a cheetah, transformed his feelings about athletics. The blades gave him unprecedented freedom and agility of movement for the first time in his life and this was quickly reflected in his running times.

Training intensely, over the next 10 years, Oscar went on to accumulate an astonishing total of 23 gold medals, 2 silver medals, 1 bronze medal, and at various stages broke world records no less than 7 times. He must surely be ranked as the world’s greatest Paralympic athlete, ever. These achievements are even the more significant in that he competed as a T44 athlete (single amputees) as opposed to T43 (double amputees) events he was entitled to contest. The reason was there was no competition for him in the T43 category.  

Oscar Pistorius, the athlete

He had now emerged as a true hero, a person who had successfully concentrated on his abilities rather than his disabilities. In May, 2008 Time Magazine included him in its 100 Most Influential People in the World list.

But he had even bigger ambitions, to become the first amputee to qualify for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Imagine that! A man who has no legs is trying to compete against able bodied athletes at Olympic level!  But this represented a monumental task.

To have a chance of representing South Africa at these games in the individual 400-metre race, Pistorius had to attain the Olympic A standard time of 45.30 seconds, or the B qualifying time of 45.90 seconds only if no other athlete from South Africa achieved the faster time. Each national athletics federation is permitted to enter three athletes in an event if the A standard is met, and only one athlete if only the B standard is met. However, he was eligible for selection as a member of the relay squad without qualifying. His best chance was to try for a time of close to 46 seconds to make the 4 × 400-metre relay team.

Training furiously and taking every opportunity to compete he turned in these times which proved what a huge struggle it would be for him to qualify for the 400 meters:

13 July 2007, Rome's Golden Gala, 46.90 seconds

15 July 2007, Norwich Union British Grand Prix at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield, 47.65 seconds.

2 July 2008, B race of the Notturna International in Milan, 47.78 seconds.

11 July 2008, B race Rome Golden Gala, 46.62 seconds.

16 July 2008, Spitzen Leichtathletik meeting in Lucerne, 46.25 seconds.

Summer 2011, three times less than 46 seconds.

19 July 2011, 19th Internazionale di Atletica Sports Solidarity Meeting in Lignano, Italy, 45.07 seconds, attaining the World Championships and Olympic Games A standard qualification mark.

It had taken 4 years of intensive training and a prodigious effort including shedding an astonishing 17 kilograms of body weight to achieve this. Imagine a person who has no legs achieving an Olympian qualifying time over no less than 400 meters. It is an absolutely stupendous achievement by any yardstick.

Oscar in fact had actually been in two battles to reach this point, both on and off the field. Ironically, able bodied athletes were making the preposterous claims that his cheetah blades gave him an unfair advantage. Under pressure, in March 2007, at a meeting in Mombasa, Kenya the IAAF amended its competition rules (specifically rule 144-2) to include a ban on the use of any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides a user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device. They might have added jet packs or wings to the list of banned devices. The dream of competing, on his own merits, against able bodied athletes in international competition seemed over for Oscar.

Then in June 2007 the IAAF issued a press release stating that the amendment to rule 144-2 was not specifically aimed at Pistorius and that he was free to compete in able bodied events unless testing proved he had an unfair advantage over able bodied athletes. It was sort of run, but under a cloud.

On July13 2007, in Rome, in perfect weather with a supportive crowd, Oscar made a special piece of history, becoming the first disabled athlete to compete with able bodied athletes at international level by running the 400 meters, coming in second with a time of 46.90 seconds. Unbeknown to him, the IAAF had installed additional high definition cameras along the track not only to televise the event but also to subsequently analyze his every movement during the race. After studying the tape, the University