Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner

Now on BBC News, a special programme on the Oscar Pistorius trial.

Oscar Pistorius. Blade Runner, trailblazer, icon. And now convicted

of the culpable homicide of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Her

parents left devastated but able to forgive, they say, the man who took

their daughter from them. At times the South African athletes seemed to

defy the laws of physics that fell from grace so fast. I think it has

broken down the barrier in which people think he lives on a cloud

because he achieves success. But who is the man behind one of sport's

greatest fairytales? He listened to all of my problems. He was too kind.

Did he feel he was above the law? There was this personality that was

working just below the surface. I don't think people really knew about

it. And yet he remains an inspiration to so many. As I lost my

leg, I saw him doing so well without two legs and he was a role model of

mine. So, what now for sport and for the Paralympic movement as its

former hero hangs his head in shame?

Oscar Pistorius did more than just win races. He changed the way the

world viewed disability. But long before he became extraordinary,

ordinary was all he wanted to be, as he himself told the BBC back at the

start of his career. They may call me the Blade Runner but I'm just

scar, a 21`year`old Paralympians. When I was born with missing calf

bones, but parents may be difficult decision of getting my legs

abdicated but today I can look at and say that they definitely made

the right decision. Growing up in the suburbs of the South African

capital, Pretoria, the young Oscar Pistorius played on these fields,

treated the same as everybody else. It was kind of like you have

prosthetic legs, that's nice, your brother will put on his shoes, you

put on your legs and off you go. That was the mentality I grew up

with. David O'Sullivan first met him when he was a schoolboy. He went to

a very good government school where he quite clearly was your typical

South African boy. Mischievous, loved his sport. If you looked at

his prosthetic legs, they were full of bumps and scratches and scrapes

that he would be able to talk me through wilder moments of his

childhood. Falling off go`karts and things like that. He struck me as

being your average South African schoolboy. It was here at this high

school but the remarkable story of Oscar Pistorius's athletics career

began. When, in the summer of 2003 while playing rugby, he badly

injured his knee and had to take a running instead. Either following

January, he had managed to break the Paralympic world record for the 100

metres. His name appears on the honours board here but such is the

controversy now surrounding their former pupil no one from the school

wants to talk about him and they won't even let us come inside. His

early training was on the missable trucks around the city, after he was

given a pair of carbon fibre blades. Go down 50`50 advocate. They were

totally different to his usual prosthetics and with them came

speed. Surprising speed. It was here at the stadium in Pretoria in March,

2004, when a teenage Pistorius after just two months of training with

Blades showed how good he was. He ran the 100 metres in just 11.5

seconds. The new world record. Within one year I had my first gold

medal at the Paralympics in Athens. 21.99! My goodness, Oscar Pistorius

has blown the world record apart. I am the Paralympic record holder in

the 100, 200 and 500 metres. He is heading for greatness. To his own

surprise, Pistorius had become a Paralympians, running to a place in

the record books immediately. That after what seems like the overnight

success can be hard work of becoming and then remaining a champion.

Natalie was the first ever Paralympians to take part in the

able`bodied Olympics, competing in the ten kilometre swim at the

Beijing games of 2008. She knows only too well the determination

needed to succeed against the odds. If you come across people on the

streets, they are always amazed at disabled people and how they can get

into a cement pool and Sweden. Some of them have arms and legs, how do

you move in a swimming pool? They can do things and ordinary person

wouldn't do. In a way you have to deal with, as a disabled person, the

disability but in a way you also inspire and a lot of these able to

people go on to achieve more than what they would have awful tough

when they were able`bodied. `` a lot of these disabled people. Tattooed

on Pistorius is this verse from the Bible. I do not run like a man

running aimlessly. I do not fight like a man beating the air. I

execute each strike with intent. I beat my body and make it my slave.

But long before it was written on his back, this was a maxim he lived

by. I put in more hours, eat better, sleep better, I trained better than

the other guys. Competing in the able`bodied South African

championships of 2005, Pistorius finished sixth in the 400 metres. It

planted the seeds of a dream. Could he win against athletes without this

ability is? And how far could he go? He took on Zimbabwe's Olympic

athlete as a trading partner. He asked if he could join us. From

there, we contacted him, how his career was going, things like that.

He could run the 400 metres in less than 45 seconds. A target Pistorius

desperately wanted to beat. The pair began to train together, travelling

to international competitions. We have some nice experiences with him,

staying with him for about four or five months, especially staying in

the same apartment, sharing the same food. He used to cook, I wash the

dishes. He was chasing a dream. A big dream. But at times Pistorius

doubted himself, wondering if he would ever succeed. He was somebody

who could say, brother, I want this so badly. He asked me, what do you

think? I said, brother, you have to just run. He was so nervous. But all

of his achievements... Everything was so intense. He had that feeling.

Every body was watching, all of these feelings. He didn't care about

the people watching, he cared about what he wanted to achieve. As the

medals increased, so did his confidence and profile. His was a

story of triumph over adversity and it inspired a nation. Affluent,

Christian and conservative, the Pistorius family are a traditional

Afrikaans family well known in Pretoria. The small city was his

home but once it was a celebrity it also became his playground. Over the

years, when the fame and the money and the stardom began to roll in,

there were incidents. We heard about them but we never wanted to report

them and we never really wanted to acknowledge them because we didn't

want to tarnish what was such a good thing for the country. This man is a

security expert and private investigator who lived just outside

the city. We were running the biggest bouncing organisation in

Pretoria, protecting the nightclubs. He arrived with some of his friends

and wanted to go in without paying. He started an argument with the head

bouncer. The argument was about that he wasn't recognised for the person

that he is and he is famous and, do you know who I am kind of attitude.

He showed aggression and attitude. And fame `` had fame and fortune got

to his head? The public didn't care. After all, he was just a young

man growing up in the public eye and going from strength to strength on

the track. There's no way that Pistorius can

catch in... Or can he? The story is gets it! Oh my goodness!

Pistorius was enjoying a steady stream of success with the medals

continuing to flow. But still questions over his Blades continued

to dog him. The world body that governs athletics decided they gave

him an unfair advantage and banned him from competing in able`bodied

competitions. But he fought it and he won. There's always going to be

people with their opinions and you will always get the guy who wants to

argue that wet is dry and Louise green. That's their job and that the

energy they want to waste but mine is on the track. I have been given a

phenomenal talent and I worked extremely hard. We were showed a new

Pistorius. The shy, `` the shy boy was gone. Now instead of

professional and business savvy sportsmen who tried to control the

media. The Oscar Pistorius that I met maybe 14 years ago, fame and

fortune had changed completely. As a sports journalist, if you are in any

way critical of what he was trying to achieve, if you criticised his

blades, if someone my radio show was critical of him and thought he had

an advantage, suddenly you word an enemy but you won't in that in a

circle any more. `` you weren't an enemy. The BBC Radio interview in

2011 showed precisely how he dealt with difficult questions. Some

people regard you as an inspiration to Paralympic athletes, no question

about that. But it might also be said that you are an inconvenient

embarrassment to the South African authorities it was effectively you

are taking them into a Charter `` uncharted ethical waters. What's

your reaction? That's an insult. This interview is over. It isn't an

insult. That's an insult. Thank you very much. And that I'm afraid is

how it finished. They told me I would never walk. That I would never

compete with other kids. And a man with no legs can't run.

Anything else you want to tell me? There was big pressure on him. You

could see the way he used to dream, even with the coach. You could see.

Not everybody knows that Oscar is somebody who laughs or whatever

but, you know, for us, when we were practising, it was so hectic. We

were chasing maybe 44 seconds. There was no time to say it was a laughing

matter with him. It was no laughing matter. At London 2012, Pistorius

made history, becoming the first amputee to run at the Olympics. But

by now more stories were emerging about an athlete who seemed rather

different to the hero betrayed in the adverts. A roommate of Oscar

Pistorius told me that he had to move out of their room because Oscar

had gone hysterical on the phone and was shouting and screaming on the

phone. It transpired he was shouting and screaming at his then girlfriend

and a man who had taken his golf and out on an overseas trip. I had the

story confirmed by so many other athletes who said it was terrible to

witness, this incredible meltdown by Oscar Pistorius. It seems so strange

that he was capable of such rage at a time when I thought he would be

channelling all his energies and efforts into performing the best he

could. He later released a statement,

saying: there was controversy on the track

as well, when Oscar Pistorius was beaten bright `` by a Brazilian

athlete in the 200 metre final in London. Oscar Pistorius suggested

his rival had cheated. TRANSLATION: He was an idol to me, not only to me

but the children as well. Then suddenly, we saw another side of

him. He said there was something wrong with my blades. After all

that, it was difficult for me to stand beside him. He saw me at the

Olympic Village and refused to talk to me. He told me that he had

apologised to me, but that never happened. He apologised to the

media, but never to me. What was media, but never to me. What was

reported in the world 's media is distinctly unsportsmanlike

behaviour, which was seen at home in South Africa very differently. The

South African media could be partly to blame as well. He had a lot of

friends in the media, and they were fans. What he did at the Paralympic

games, if I was a newspaper editor in South Africa, my headline would

be Oscar Pistorius embarrasses South Africa. But he was betrayed as the

guy who wasn't at fault. He acted in a spoiled brat manner, when he lost.

`` portrayed. The man who has now become the new poster boy of

Paralympic sport told me that Oscar Pistorius was also capable of

surprising generosity. He gave me words of advice, encouragement. You

know, coming through. He was there for me as well. At the final in

London, he told me just before, do you mind if I pray for you? He was a

nice person, to be there. But you never know. It is a crazy situation,

but in terms of what he did the Paralympic sport, it says in itself,

he made that first breakthrough. Even now, currently, he was someone

I would call. Two days before, he would say I could meet him. For all

of these past years, I have had a problem, and he would never question

me. If I ever asked him for money. I can say, honestly, he was too kind

to me. During his trial, such was the conflicting picture painted of

Oscar Pistorius, the prosecution coined the phrase" the two Oscars" .

It emerged he accidentally fired a gun in a crowded Johannesburg

restaurant, and asked a friend to take the blame. One month later,

Reeva Steenkamp was dead. In the past year, also, leading up to the

shooting, he really seemed to be a different person to the public

persona he presented. You heard about the fast cars, how he was an

insomniac who used to go to the shooting range in the middle of the

night, and we heard about the sunroof incident where he discharged

his firearm through the open roof of a moving car. We heard about the

incident where a gun went off in a busy restaurant. There were more and

more incidents happening which showed Oscar Pistorius to be more

volatile and aggressive, and really not quite the public image that he

had been so careful to present to the media and the public. None of

these incidents could have foretold the events of February the 14th,

2013, when Reeva Steenkamp was killed. Some feel the tragedy could

have been avoided if South Africa had loved Oscar Pistorius a bit

less. The shock it is that, for all of the previous situations where he

was involved in gun incidents, if he was properly prosecuted at that

stage, Reeva Steenkamp would have been alive today. `` the shock of it

is. If the gun incident at the restaurant was handled correctly by

the police, the law in South Africa states that if someone makes a

mistake or if they gun goes off, it should be properly investigated. It

would have been a public expression of what happened. Obviously, I think

it would have had the necessary effect on him. Thinking to himself,

I need to be more careful. Unfortunately, celebrities,

well`known people, and even myself would be treated differently. We

want to try and help those people. Sometimes, we literally help them on

the way down. The law should be the same for everyone. Running at the

London Olympics was the realisation of a dream. Struggling to hold back

the tears, Oscar Pistorius told the BBC just how much it meant to him. I

don't know if I should cry and be happy, but no, I had a job to do.

There was such a mix of emotions. I didn't know what form I would be in

today, I had a good race tactic, I stuck to it. Thanks to my family.

When I walked onto the ground here, it was the most amazing experience.

Thank you very much. London 2012 tour the world that to be a

Paralympian was to be superhuman, with Oscar Pistorius at the

forefront of it all. Sir Philip Craven is the most powerful figure

in Paralympic sport. A great athlete, someone who is passionate

about athletics. Someone who really loved what he was doing. The

training that he did to get to the speeds that he achieved, things have

changed and things have moved on. We must never forget the contribution

that Oscar Pistorius made, which is mind boggling really. The

Paralympics are bigger than Oscar Pistorius. He was just one athlete.

He is part of a massive organisation. There are a lot of

great athletes in it. Great athletes will follow in his path, and we met

many here in South Africa who have been inspired by him. The

high`performance NT here at the University of Pretoria was where

Oscar Pistorius began his athletic career. `` centre. Now South African

sport is looking at a new generation of talent. Here, they search from

schools to slums for the very best the country has to offer. Foreign

athletes pay to use the facilities of the centre, and that money funds

young African hopefuls to eat, train and live here. It is not easy

though. The sad thing is that a gold medal rower, for example, when they

won gold, they were the toast of the town, and two months later, we were

scrounging for money to buy them food. They are remembered from 4`

six weeks, and then forgotten. The Oscar thing is a blip on the radar,

the country will get over it. I believe the talent on the will is

there to win. South Africa is a winning country, they hate to lose.

Oscar Pistorius was a young boy. He taught himself, listen, I want to

achieve this goal, and I will let nothing stop me from achieving it. I

take a lot of inspiration seeing these guys around here, knowing it

is within my reach. What he did as an athlete was inspiring, and I

cannot take that away from him. This 19`year`old roller lost his leg in a

lawnmower accident. He is still an inspiration to me. `` rower. When I

lost my leg, I saw him doing so well without two legs, and he was a role

model of mine. I stayed positive for the rest of my life. Some remain

loyal to their fallen hero, but there is little sense of Oscar

Pistorius' shadow hanging over the track here. Instead young athletes

are grateful for the chance they have been given and train with quiet

determination. Elsewhere, it may take time to South Africa to come to

terms with the demise of a man who made its people proud. As an athlete

superhuman, but as a man, he was flawed. One of the most remarkable

careers in sport is over, and the biggest tragedy of all, a life has

been lost. Sports ultimate fall from grace is complete.

Although it has been quiet across the UK with high pressure

dominating, let's have a look at what has been going on around the

Adriatic Sea over the last few days. Deep low pressure has

generated powerful thunderstorms, torrential rain, and there has been

flash flooding in Italy towards Serbia and Croatia. And further

north as well. At home it remains quiet as