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IS 13 an unlucky number? The year 2013 has gotten off to a rocky start in world sport. First Lance, now Oscar.
Even if nothing else goes wrong, it’s already an annus horribilis. So what’s happening to our heroes, and why? These are crucial questions for the $750bn sports industry. But perhaps the most important question is how did it happen to our boy?
The upside
Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius was born in Sandton, in 1986. Pistorius grew up in a Christian home with an elder brother, Carl, and a younger sister, Aimée.
Due to a congenital absence of fibulae, both legs were amputated halfway between his knees and ankles at 11 months of age. He attended Pretoria Boys High and played water polo and tennis at provincial level. He also participated in wrestling.
In June 2003 he suffered a knee injury and began running to aid rehabilitation in early 2004 at the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre. Ampie Louw was and remains his coach. That same year Pistorius competed in his first Paralympics (in Athens) where he won a gold and bronze medal.
In August last year Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee to compete at the Olympic Games, which brought his fame to its zenith as it reached a worldwide audience.
“As I came out of the tunnel, I saw my friends and family, including my grandmother with the South African flag,” he said. “On the blocks, I didn’t know whether I should cry or be happy.”
He came second in the first heat of the 400m (in 45.44, a season’s best), but finished last in the semi-final (46.54 seconds). In the 4 × 400 metres relay race final on 10 August, SA’s relay team finished eighth out of nine in a season’s best time for the team.
Pistorius ran the final leg in 45.9 seconds. He carried the country’s flag during the closing ceremony.
Following appearances on Letterman and Larry King Live, Tom Hanks began bidding for the film rights to the “Blade Runner” story. Later in the same year Time magazine included Pistorius in its list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People.
By the end of 2012 the young South African had set up a compelling tale. He was enjoying worldwide popularity and sufficient financial security to splurge on a R3.5m McLaren, which he described as “a Christmas present”.
The UK’s Guardian website called Pistorius “the golden boy with an edge of steel”. Together with his glamorous girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, some Brits described the couple as “South Africa’s answer to Posh and Becks”.
The downside
In 2002, Pistorius’s mother Sheila died as a result of adverse medical complications related to an incorrect diagnosis. Her son credited her as one of the greatest influences in his life and a major driving force behind his success.
“There wasn’t much scope for me to think about my disability as a disadvantage or to pity myself.” Instead of introspection, Pistorius seemed to go overboard as an extrovert – fighting for a place in the sun, dating a string of beautiful women, pushing aside potential rivals and driving (and crashing) fast boats, cars and motorbikes.
In 2009 he survived a speedboat crash, which required 172 stitches in total. After that he was in a motorbike crash.
In his biography Blade Runner, Pistorius is also revealed to have crashed his car after falling asleep behind the wheel (en route to a girlfriend after a fight). In 2009 he was arrested and charged with common assault after an incident at a party (involving Cassidy Taylor-Memmory), and spent the night in the local jail.
Following his ascendancy at the Olympics proper, Pistorius’s star began to fall as early as September last year, when a Brazilian rival beat him into second place, leading to a furious outburst. Realising he’d tarnished his squeaky clean image, Pistorius quickly backtracked and issued an apology.
Later that month he appeared on the beaches of the Seychelles in the SABC3 magazine show Top Billing with Samantha Taylor. But a New York paper appeared to show a dalliance with a Russian model, Anastassia Khozzissova, while Pistorius was in London.
Three months later, and back in SA, Pistorius threatened to break the legs of former soccer player and Supersport commentator, Mark Batchelor, a friend of Clifton Shores producer Quinton van der Burgh, when Pistorius discovered that Taylor had cheated on him with Van den Burgh while he (Oscar) was at the Olympics.
But Taylor later said: “Oscar is certainly not what people think he is.” In November he arrived at the SA Sports Awards in Sandton with FHM model Reeva Steenkamp. Both were cagey about whether they were in a relationship or not. “It’s just a coincidence that we’re sitting at the same table and arrived in the same car,” Steenkamp demurred.
At the end of the evening they left together. Taylor revealed that Steenkamp was dating a friend of Pistorius’ (Francois Hougaard).
Pistorius’s circle of friends, based on social media photos, etc, seemed to include an interesting “bad boys’ club”: the ex-con Gayton MacKenzie, rugby player Francois Hougaard, South African professional boxer Kevin Lerena and Justin Divaris (CEO of a luxury car retailer).
The underlying theme to these friendships: fast cars, big muscles, creepy tattoos, glamorous parties and beautiful women.
In an interview with Rapport, Taylor was “prepared to reveal what (Pistorius) made me go through”, but subsequently withdrew what she had said.
In November 2012 The Star reported a charge of defamation had been laid against Pistorius, who had in turn laid charges of intimidation against the former soccer player Marc Batchelor. By the beginning of 2013, when Pistorius purchased a R3.5m sportscar, friends were worried that his insomnia and risky behaviour were getting worse.
A visiting writer from The New York Times perhaps came closest to uncovering the “other” Oscar, when he described Pistorius as “more than a little crazy”, citing a skittish, gun-loving insomniac with a “frenzied need to take on the world at maximum speed and with minimum caution”.
Pistorius alludes to his insomnia in the very same The New York Times magazine article by Michael Sokolove, describing a visit to an all-night tattoo parlour from 02:30 to about 08:30 and a pattern of sleeping disorders. The contents of the article itself probably did nothing to soothe Pistorius’s anxieties, especially this paragraph:
“The most provocative aspect of Weyand and Bundle’s argument – and clearly the biggest affront to Pistorius – is their calculation that the Cheetah blades, over the length of 400 meters, or once around the track, give him an 11.9-second advantage. That would make him no better than an average high school runner.”
Having to constantly fight for a place to race (and then also defend his achievements), rooming with an MMA fighter, and trying to be one of the boys would have exacted a constant, heavy toll. But shooting at the local range was a questionable form of stress relief.
One of the officers investigating the Silver Lakes crime scene is reported to have said, that in terms of the Domestic Violence Act, Pistorius should not have been allowed to possess any firearms. He had seven pending licences, including one for a semi-automatic.
Note: At the time of writing it was speculated, following the discovery of steroids and signs of heavy drinking in Pistorius’s house, that these might have fuelled “roid rage” and could partially explain how Pistorius may have woken up at 03:00 and mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder.
The result
Pistorius’ arrest is of course rock bottom for the sports marketer. While Pistorius’s agent Peet van Zyl assured the media that his client was still enjoying “overwhelming support” from “a lot of fans”, Van Zyl also admitted that recent events were “from a management side… a tragic circumstance”.
He added: “We can only give Oscar our support at this point in time.”
But Oscargate is a nightmare of entirely different proportions to Lancegate. In fact while Armstrong’s prospects appear bleak, one can still see Lance maintaining a fanbase and continuing to compete and enjoying public support. The same is a lot less clear with Pistorius, whose meteoric rise is based far more on public perception than actual performances.
It is perhaps surprising then that up to now some of Pistorius’s sponsors have yet to formally break ties. Ironically, Pistorius’ South African partner, M-Net, appears to be the first to have cut and run.
Within hours of the shooting at the upmarket Silver Lakes estate, M-Net was pulling down its billboards and dismantling its entire “Oscar Night” campaign with immediate effect. But Nike’s sponsorship of Pistorius, thought to be worth $2m, is already under fire.
The online ad for Nike featuring the unfortunately worded tagline “I am the bullet in the chamber” was quickly removed from Pistorius’ website, although it’s not the first time Nike has associated itself with the idea of gear-as-weaponry; in fact it is fairly common in competitive sport.
The US’ aerodynamic cycling rim maker ZIPP uses the tagline “Speed Weaponry”. At the time of writing the logos of Össur, BT, Oakley, Nike and fashion house Thierry Mugler (Pistorius’s five main sponsors) remain visible at www.oscarpistorius.com. Nike and co remain tight lipped and are, for the moment, standing by their man.
Interestingly, while Nike no longer sponsors or endorses Lance Armstrong, and remains on the fence on the Pistorius case (“pending the police investigation”), Nike continues to endorse Tiger Woods.
Clearly, celebrity brand endorsement is a perilous journey, not only for the brand but for the athlete who stands to lose everything overnight. Can the brands that are associated with Pistorius afford to wait for the case to be heard?
One director of a sports sponsorship company says that “even if … found innocent, he is damaged goods. Brands need to act quickly to distance themselves from him… It’s the sensible thing to do".
The director of sports marketing agency Brand Rapport reinforces this view, saying: “This is very different to the Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong cases… There’s no coming back from this.” Thus Iceland’s Össur, a global leader in orthopaedics, which is saying a decision is “highly premature”, may find itself singed by the firestorm of negative press that is likely to ensue.
While Nike is a high-powered brand and saw a fit in Pistorius’s tenacity, the brand will also wish to erase the associations in a recent video that features Pistorius (“My body is my weapon. This is how I fight.”)
Pistorius himself may rue the day he tattooed Corinthians 9:26-27 on to his back, which reads: “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...”
In future, brands will need to do detailed background checks and re-evaluate their current celebrity endorsements.
For more go to finweek.com or follow Finweek on Twitter.
Nick van der Leek
nickvanderleek@gmail.com
Even if nothing else goes wrong, it’s already an annus horribilis. So what’s happening to our heroes, and why? These are crucial questions for the $750bn sports industry. But perhaps the most important question is how did it happen to our boy?
The upside
Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius was born in Sandton, in 1986. Pistorius grew up in a Christian home with an elder brother, Carl, and a younger sister, Aimée.
Due to a congenital absence of fibulae, both legs were amputated halfway between his knees and ankles at 11 months of age. He attended Pretoria Boys High and played water polo and tennis at provincial level. He also participated in wrestling.
In June 2003 he suffered a knee injury and began running to aid rehabilitation in early 2004 at the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre. Ampie Louw was and remains his coach. That same year Pistorius competed in his first Paralympics (in Athens) where he won a gold and bronze medal.
In August last year Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee to compete at the Olympic Games, which brought his fame to its zenith as it reached a worldwide audience.
“As I came out of the tunnel, I saw my friends and family, including my grandmother with the South African flag,” he said. “On the blocks, I didn’t know whether I should cry or be happy.”
He came second in the first heat of the 400m (in 45.44, a season’s best), but finished last in the semi-final (46.54 seconds). In the 4 × 400 metres relay race final on 10 August, SA’s relay team finished eighth out of nine in a season’s best time for the team.
Pistorius ran the final leg in 45.9 seconds. He carried the country’s flag during the closing ceremony.
Following appearances on Letterman and Larry King Live, Tom Hanks began bidding for the film rights to the “Blade Runner” story. Later in the same year Time magazine included Pistorius in its list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People.
By the end of 2012 the young South African had set up a compelling tale. He was enjoying worldwide popularity and sufficient financial security to splurge on a R3.5m McLaren, which he described as “a Christmas present”.
The UK’s Guardian website called Pistorius “the golden boy with an edge of steel”. Together with his glamorous girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, some Brits described the couple as “South Africa’s answer to Posh and Becks”.
The downside
In 2002, Pistorius’s mother Sheila died as a result of adverse medical complications related to an incorrect diagnosis. Her son credited her as one of the greatest influences in his life and a major driving force behind his success.
“There wasn’t much scope for me to think about my disability as a disadvantage or to pity myself.” Instead of introspection, Pistorius seemed to go overboard as an extrovert – fighting for a place in the sun, dating a string of beautiful women, pushing aside potential rivals and driving (and crashing) fast boats, cars and motorbikes.
In 2009 he survived a speedboat crash, which required 172 stitches in total. After that he was in a motorbike crash.
In his biography Blade Runner, Pistorius is also revealed to have crashed his car after falling asleep behind the wheel (en route to a girlfriend after a fight). In 2009 he was arrested and charged with common assault after an incident at a party (involving Cassidy Taylor-Memmory), and spent the night in the local jail.
Following his ascendancy at the Olympics proper, Pistorius’s star began to fall as early as September last year, when a Brazilian rival beat him into second place, leading to a furious outburst. Realising he’d tarnished his squeaky clean image, Pistorius quickly backtracked and issued an apology.
Later that month he appeared on the beaches of the Seychelles in the SABC3 magazine show Top Billing with Samantha Taylor. But a New York paper appeared to show a dalliance with a Russian model, Anastassia Khozzissova, while Pistorius was in London.
Three months later, and back in SA, Pistorius threatened to break the legs of former soccer player and Supersport commentator, Mark Batchelor, a friend of Clifton Shores producer Quinton van der Burgh, when Pistorius discovered that Taylor had cheated on him with Van den Burgh while he (Oscar) was at the Olympics.
But Taylor later said: “Oscar is certainly not what people think he is.” In November he arrived at the SA Sports Awards in Sandton with FHM model Reeva Steenkamp. Both were cagey about whether they were in a relationship or not. “It’s just a coincidence that we’re sitting at the same table and arrived in the same car,” Steenkamp demurred.
At the end of the evening they left together. Taylor revealed that Steenkamp was dating a friend of Pistorius’ (Francois Hougaard).
Pistorius’s circle of friends, based on social media photos, etc, seemed to include an interesting “bad boys’ club”: the ex-con Gayton MacKenzie, rugby player Francois Hougaard, South African professional boxer Kevin Lerena and Justin Divaris (CEO of a luxury car retailer).
The underlying theme to these friendships: fast cars, big muscles, creepy tattoos, glamorous parties and beautiful women.
In an interview with Rapport, Taylor was “prepared to reveal what (Pistorius) made me go through”, but subsequently withdrew what she had said.
In November 2012 The Star reported a charge of defamation had been laid against Pistorius, who had in turn laid charges of intimidation against the former soccer player Marc Batchelor. By the beginning of 2013, when Pistorius purchased a R3.5m sportscar, friends were worried that his insomnia and risky behaviour were getting worse.
A visiting writer from The New York Times perhaps came closest to uncovering the “other” Oscar, when he described Pistorius as “more than a little crazy”, citing a skittish, gun-loving insomniac with a “frenzied need to take on the world at maximum speed and with minimum caution”.
Pistorius alludes to his insomnia in the very same The New York Times magazine article by Michael Sokolove, describing a visit to an all-night tattoo parlour from 02:30 to about 08:30 and a pattern of sleeping disorders. The contents of the article itself probably did nothing to soothe Pistorius’s anxieties, especially this paragraph:
“The most provocative aspect of Weyand and Bundle’s argument – and clearly the biggest affront to Pistorius – is their calculation that the Cheetah blades, over the length of 400 meters, or once around the track, give him an 11.9-second advantage. That would make him no better than an average high school runner.”
Having to constantly fight for a place to race (and then also defend his achievements), rooming with an MMA fighter, and trying to be one of the boys would have exacted a constant, heavy toll. But shooting at the local range was a questionable form of stress relief.
One of the officers investigating the Silver Lakes crime scene is reported to have said, that in terms of the Domestic Violence Act, Pistorius should not have been allowed to possess any firearms. He had seven pending licences, including one for a semi-automatic.
Note: At the time of writing it was speculated, following the discovery of steroids and signs of heavy drinking in Pistorius’s house, that these might have fuelled “roid rage” and could partially explain how Pistorius may have woken up at 03:00 and mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder.
The result
Pistorius’ arrest is of course rock bottom for the sports marketer. While Pistorius’s agent Peet van Zyl assured the media that his client was still enjoying “overwhelming support” from “a lot of fans”, Van Zyl also admitted that recent events were “from a management side… a tragic circumstance”.
He added: “We can only give Oscar our support at this point in time.”
But Oscargate is a nightmare of entirely different proportions to Lancegate. In fact while Armstrong’s prospects appear bleak, one can still see Lance maintaining a fanbase and continuing to compete and enjoying public support. The same is a lot less clear with Pistorius, whose meteoric rise is based far more on public perception than actual performances.
It is perhaps surprising then that up to now some of Pistorius’s sponsors have yet to formally break ties. Ironically, Pistorius’ South African partner, M-Net, appears to be the first to have cut and run.
Within hours of the shooting at the upmarket Silver Lakes estate, M-Net was pulling down its billboards and dismantling its entire “Oscar Night” campaign with immediate effect. But Nike’s sponsorship of Pistorius, thought to be worth $2m, is already under fire.
The online ad for Nike featuring the unfortunately worded tagline “I am the bullet in the chamber” was quickly removed from Pistorius’ website, although it’s not the first time Nike has associated itself with the idea of gear-as-weaponry; in fact it is fairly common in competitive sport.
The US’ aerodynamic cycling rim maker ZIPP uses the tagline “Speed Weaponry”. At the time of writing the logos of Össur, BT, Oakley, Nike and fashion house Thierry Mugler (Pistorius’s five main sponsors) remain visible at www.oscarpistorius.com. Nike and co remain tight lipped and are, for the moment, standing by their man.
Interestingly, while Nike no longer sponsors or endorses Lance Armstrong, and remains on the fence on the Pistorius case (“pending the police investigation”), Nike continues to endorse Tiger Woods.
Clearly, celebrity brand endorsement is a perilous journey, not only for the brand but for the athlete who stands to lose everything overnight. Can the brands that are associated with Pistorius afford to wait for the case to be heard?
One director of a sports sponsorship company says that “even if … found innocent, he is damaged goods. Brands need to act quickly to distance themselves from him… It’s the sensible thing to do".
The director of sports marketing agency Brand Rapport reinforces this view, saying: “This is very different to the Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong cases… There’s no coming back from this.” Thus Iceland’s Össur, a global leader in orthopaedics, which is saying a decision is “highly premature”, may find itself singed by the firestorm of negative press that is likely to ensue.
While Nike is a high-powered brand and saw a fit in Pistorius’s tenacity, the brand will also wish to erase the associations in a recent video that features Pistorius (“My body is my weapon. This is how I fight.”)
Pistorius himself may rue the day he tattooed Corinthians 9:26-27 on to his back, which reads: “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...”
In future, brands will need to do detailed background checks and re-evaluate their current celebrity endorsements.
For more go to finweek.com or follow Finweek on Twitter.
Nick van der Leek
nickvanderleek@gmail.com
