Superman, gunman

At the 2012 London Olympics, before 80 000 roaring fans and a constellation of camera flashes, it took Oscar Pistorius 45.44 seconds to become a global icon.

The South African’s sprint around the 400m track was the first time in history that a double-amputee had raced at the Olympic Games.

Then on Valentine’s Day in 2013, his achievements were just as quickly demolished. In the early hours of the morning at his upmarket Pretoria home, he shot and killed his 29-year-old model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

At his trial in 2014, he sat for months in a windowless courtroom and watched as his world was washed away.

His conviction for manslaughter put him in jail for a year but his crime was upgraded to murder on appeal and in July 2016, he was sentenced to six years.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Appeal more than doubled that jail term to 13 years and five months after the state appealed.

But the high-profile proceedings also exposed the 29-year-old’s darker side: a dangerously volatile man with a penchant for guns, women and fast cars.

In 2012 he made history at the Olympics. “He is the definition of global inspiration,” Time magazine proclaimed in its 2012 list of the world’s most influential people. Less than a year later, Pistorius featured on the cover with the words “Man, Superman, Gunman”. –