Nike. And more specifically, Nike's legend-making machine.
Image by Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters
The prosecution of Oscar Pistorius for Reeva Steenkamp's murder is playing out on the front pages of newspapers and websites across the world. This is not the way most trials, even murder trials, proceed — unknown to anyone not related to the parties involved — and it's much more prominent even than most coverage of similar crimes committed by athletes. People are shocked by this case for reasons beyond its graphic, terrible details. And at the nexus of the reasons why this is true, there is Nike.
Oscar Pistorius was a Nike athlete. Nike suspended their endorsement of him today, meaning that they haven't dropped him altogether — they're just keeping him at a distance until this whole murder-trial thing works out. Potentially, one day, if Pistorius and his lawyers successfully argue that he shot Steenkamp in the mistaken belief that she was a burglar and, escaping with minimal to no jail time, he returns to the track, Nike could reunite with him, restoring the relationship that made this story so internationally significant in the first place.
Source: youtube.com
In fact, the last three sports meltdowns of this magnitude have involved larger-than-life characters whose mythic personas were created, cultivated, and relentlessly amplified by the shoe company. Before the Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal disgraced Joe Paterno, Nike had gone so far as to name a child development center at their headquarters after him, playing into his image as a principled role model for youth. They've since dropped his name from the building, though cofounder and chairman Phil Knight has also walked back his disavowal of Paterno.
Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong owed a huge portion of both his own personal brand as well as that of his charity, Livestrong, to the promotional efforts of Nike, who used his triumph over cancer and dominance of cycling to turn him into not just the face of his relatively minor sport but one of the most well-known athletes in the world, an international symbol for hard work. After years of supporting Armstrong through increasingly credible allegations that his hard work was supplemented by cheating, extreme levels of dishonesty, and legal intimidation of innocent third parties, Nike finally severed its relationship with him in the wake of his admission that he had in fact taken PEDs for many years.