Oscar Pistorius
Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius (/pɪsˈtɔːriəs/; Afrikaans: [pisˈtɔrjus]; born 22 November 1986) is a South African former professional sprinter and convicted murderer. In 2015 he was found guilty for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Both of Pistorius' feet had been amputated when he was 11 months old due to a congenital defect. When he was born he was missing the outside of both feet along with both fibula bones in his legs. Pistorius ran in both non-disabled sprint events and in sprint events for below-knee amputees. He was the tenth athlete to compete at both the Paralympic Games and Olympic Games.
After becoming a Paralympic champion, Pistorius attempted to enter non-disabled international competitions, over persistent objections by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and charges that his artificial limbs gave an unfair advantage. Pistorius eventually prevailed in this legal dispute. At the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, Pistorius became the first amputee to win a non-disabled world track medal. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Pistorius became the first double-leg amputee to participate in the Olympic Games.
On 14 February 2013, Pistorius fatally shot his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, in his Pretoria home. He claimed he had mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder hiding in the bathroom, but he was arrested and charged with murder. At his trial the following year, Pistorius was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of culpable homicide. He received a five-year prison sentence for culpable homicide and a concurrent three-year suspended prison sentence for a separate reckless endangerment conviction.
He was temporarily released on house arrest in 2015 while the case was presented to a panel at the Supreme Court of Appeal, which overturned the culpable homicide verdict and convicted him of murder. In July 2015, Judge Thokozile Masipa extended Pistorius' sentence to six years. On appeal by the state for a longer prison sentence, the Supreme Court of Appeal more than doubled Pistorius' prison term to 13 years and five months.
Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius was born to Henke and Sheila Pistorius on 22 November 1986 in Sandton, Johannesburg, in what was then Transvaal Province (now Gauteng Province) of South Africa. He grew up in a Christian home and has an elder brother, Carl, and a younger sister, Aimée. Pistorius credits his mother, who died at the age of 43 when Pistorius was 15 years old, as a major influence in his life. Pistorius is a white South African with Italian ancestry from his maternal great-grandfather, who was an Italian emigrant to Kenya. He is of Afrikaner ethnicity with Afrikaans as a mother tongue and is also fluent in English.
Pistorius was born with fibular hemimelia (congenital absence of the fibula) in both legs. When he was eleven months old, both of his legs were amputated halfway between his knees and ankles. He attended Constantia Kloof Primary School and Pretoria Boys High School, where he played rugby union in the school's third XV team. He played water polo and tennis at provincial level between the ages of 11 and 13 In addition, Pistorius took part in club Olympic wrestling, and trained at Jannie Brooks' garage gym in Pretoria. Brooks remarked that it took six months before he noticed that Pistorius "had no legs" but nonetheless was able to do many exercises including "boxing, skipping and doing press-ups"
After a serious rugby knee injury in June 2003, he was introduced to running in January 2004 while undergoing rehabilitation at the University of Pretoria's High Performance Centre[34] with coach Ampie Louw, and "never looked back". His first racing blades were fitted by South African prosthetist Francois van der Watt. Because he was unable to find suitable running blades in Pretoria, Van der Watt ordered the pair to be made by a local engineer. However, as these quickly broke, Van der Watt referred Pistorius to American prosthetist and Paralympic sprinter Brian Frasure to be fitted for blades by Icelandic company Össur.
Pistorius began studying for a Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.) in business management with sports science at the University of Pretoria in 2006. In a June 2008 interview for his University's website, he joked: "I won't graduate soon. With all the training I have had to cut down on my subjects. Hopefully I'll finish by the time I'm 30!" Asked by a journalist for his "sporting motto", he said: "You're not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have."
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