rest of the field and he crossed the tape first. We were champions!
‘I put down the phone in utter disbelief and I told my wife, “I knew he was quick, but I had no idea how quick. It’s unbelievable. It’s a fairy tale. Someone has to write about this kid.” I mean, my colleague was right: the boy with no legs, he could fly!’
Everything happened extraordinarily fast from that day on. It turned out that the time in which he won the 100 meters, 11.72 seconds, beat the world Paralympic record for double, or ‘bilateral’, amputees. By nearly half a second.
Rugby was forgotten. The best he could ever hope for in that sport was to be a moderately good representative of his school, and never at the highest level. Throwing himself into running, he found the refuge he craved from the pain of his mother’s death, but also a pursuit that turned out to be ideally suited to his temperament. To succeed as a runner he needed to depend on no one and nothing but himself. The more he pushed himself to the limits his unlikely talent would allow, the faster he would go. Here, at last, he was the master of his own fate, able to a degree his mother could not have dared imagine not only to disguise his vulnerability from the world, but to shine bright.
Still only seventeen, with a year and a half of secondary school to complete, he competed in the South African disabled games and,although initially perplexed at finding himself in the company of disabled people, a group to which he had been conditioned to imagine he did not belong, he instantly achieved the qualifying time to represent his country in the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games. Suddenly he was all over the news, he did a TV advertisement, he started receiving sponsorship money, he bought his first car and discovered his love of speed on the road – another pursuit where, regardless of his legless condition, he felt in complete control.
In June, three months before the Athens Games, he contacted Francois van der Watt, who had just moved to the US.
‘ “I am in the South African team. I need new legs,” were his words to me,’ Van der Watt recalled. ‘So I told him to fly over. He did, I measured him, made the socket, got the alignment right and there he was, with his first Cheetahs. They took him to the next level.’
The Flex-Foot Cheetah had been the Paralympic athlete’s brand of choice since the early 1990s, and the one Pistorius would use for the rest of his career. The first time he tried them out competitively was in Oklahoma, where Van der Watt took him to take part in the Endeavor Games for disabled runners. He ran in the 200 meters against the fastest men in the US, and won. The local press were all over him. It was the first time he’d made the news outside South Africa.
‘We shared a room in Oklahoma City,’ Van der Watt said, ‘and what struck me was how focused Oscar was, how determined to do his absolute best. He did not seem overawed at all at the prospect of his first big race outside South Africa. Then I saw how he ran, and how well he handled himself in public with the press, and I knew, right there, what I had always suspected but had not dared fully imagine before. He had enormous potential. He was going to be big.’
How would he do in Athens, though, in a giant stadium before a large crowd? All he had was eight months’ athletics experience behindhim. He would be competing against veterans, a number of them single-leg amputees, who were five or ten years older than he was. Also, Louw had identified a critical weakness in his technique. He was not fast off the starting blocks – not fast enough to win the 100 meters at this level. Having failed as yet to master the art of the sprinter’s classic, crouching start, down on one knee, he lost explosivity by using a standing start, as long distance runners did. In the 100 meters he would be giving too much of an early advantage to his rivals to have any hope of winning. He took part in the
‘I put down the phone in utter disbelief and I told my wife, “I knew he was quick, but I had no idea how quick. It’s unbelievable. It’s a fairy tale. Someone has to write about this kid.” I mean, my colleague was right: the boy with no legs, he could fly!’
Everything happened extraordinarily fast from that day on. It turned out that the time in which he won the 100 meters, 11.72 seconds, beat the world Paralympic record for double, or ‘bilateral’, amputees. By nearly half a second.
Rugby was forgotten. The best he could ever hope for in that sport was to be a moderately good representative of his school, and never at the highest level. Throwing himself into running, he found the refuge he craved from the pain of his mother’s death, but also a pursuit that turned out to be ideally suited to his temperament. To succeed as a runner he needed to depend on no one and nothing but himself. The more he pushed himself to the limits his unlikely talent would allow, the faster he would go. Here, at last, he was the master of his own fate, able to a degree his mother could not have dared imagine not only to disguise his vulnerability from the world, but to shine bright.
Still only seventeen, with a year and a half of secondary school to complete, he competed in the South African disabled games and,although initially perplexed at finding himself in the company of disabled people, a group to which he had been conditioned to imagine he did not belong, he instantly achieved the qualifying time to represent his country in the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games. Suddenly he was all over the news, he did a TV advertisement, he started receiving sponsorship money, he bought his first car and discovered his love of speed on the road – another pursuit where, regardless of his legless condition, he felt in complete control.
In June, three months before the Athens Games, he contacted Francois van der Watt, who had just moved to the US.
‘ “I am in the South African team. I need new legs,” were his words to me,’ Van der Watt recalled. ‘So I told him to fly over. He did, I measured him, made the socket, got the alignment right and there he was, with his first Cheetahs. They took him to the next level.’
The Flex-Foot Cheetah had been the Paralympic athlete’s brand of choice since the early 1990s, and the one Pistorius would use for the rest of his career. The first time he tried them out competitively was in Oklahoma, where Van der Watt took him to take part in the Endeavor Games for disabled runners. He ran in the 200 meters against the fastest men in the US, and won. The local press were all over him. It was the first time he’d made the news outside South Africa.
‘We shared a room in Oklahoma City,’ Van der Watt said, ‘and what struck me was how focused Oscar was, how determined to do his absolute best. He did not seem overawed at all at the prospect of his first big race outside South Africa. Then I saw how he ran, and how well he handled himself in public with the press, and I knew, right there, what I had always suspected but had not dared fully imagine before. He had enormous potential. He was going to be big.’
How would he do in Athens, though, in a giant stadium before a large crowd? All he had was eight months’ athletics experience behindhim. He would be competing against veterans, a number of them single-leg amputees, who were five or ten years older than he was. Also, Louw had identified a critical weakness in his technique. He was not fast off the starting blocks – not fast enough to win the 100 meters at this level. Having failed as yet to master the art of the sprinter’s classic, crouching start, down on one knee, he lost explosivity by using a standing start, as long distance runners did. In the 100 meters he would be giving too much of an early advantage to his rivals to have any hope of winning. He took part in the
Similar Books
