2023-08-20 21:42:11
At 20, Batswana Letsile Tebogo offered the African continent its first world medal in history in the queen race of athletics, the men’s 100m, on Sunday in Budapest.
Published on: 08/20/2023 – 21:42Modified on: 08/21/2023 – 10:26
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It’s a silver medal on the podium but a victory for an entire continent. At the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Batswana Letsile Tebogo became the first African in history to win a medal in the 100 meters, the queen discipline of athletics.
In the sweltering Hungarian, at the end of the straight, Tebogo, personal best in 9 sec 88, was only beaten by Noah Lyles, face of world athletics, by five hundredths.
The accomplishment is significant enough that when it was announced at a press conference, it was greeted with applause coming in particular from Lyles, and the third sprinter on the podium, the Briton Zharnel Hughes.
The problem is they belittle the name. But they can’t undermine Greatness????????.
— Letsile Tebogo (@LetsileTebogo2) August 20, 2023
Before him, they are ten, counting the Kenyan Ferdinand Omanyala engaged in the final on the Hungarian track, to have broken their teeth there. The latest before the 2023 edition, the South African Akani Simbine, three times in 2017, 2019 and 2022.
Tebogo has become a promise of world athletics, beyond the African continent, by becoming double world junior champion in the 100m and double vice-world junior champion in the 200m in 2021 and 2022.
It was last year, when he was still 18, that he became only the second runner in history to break the ten-second barrier in the 100m before the age of twenty (along with Bromell). A few months later, he passed under 20 seconds over 200 m.
However, his world silver medal exceeds his own expectations. “It’s really a great pride to win this silver medal. This medal is a bonus for me. It was not the plan, the objective, it was only the final”, admits Tebogo.
Bolt’s “Reach the Level”
By way of comparison, the year he turned 21, Usain Bolt – his “idol” even though he “doesn’t really remember watching it”, because he “never thought he could live off athletics” when he was a child – didn’t yet know what it was like to run the 100m in less than 10 seconds.
Before coming to athletics, which he only got serious about “2018-2019, when I realized I could turn professional,” Tebogo, raised by a single mother with his younger brother, played in football, “winger because of my speed”. But he, who on Saturday wrote a page in the sporting history of his continent, finally preferred the practice of an individual sport.
Batswana Letsile Tebogo after the men’s 100m final at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, August 20, 2023 © Jewel SAMAD / AFP
“I think after this medal, the continent and the country will think about having more races, and big races that people want to see,” hopes Tebogo, who shares his training between Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, the South Africa and Europe throughout the year.
He also dreams, one day, of the Olympic Games on African soil, “so that people come to see how beautiful Africa is”.
“It’s time for Africa to take control of the sprint on the international scene”, he dared at the beginning of 2022 with the specialized site Runblogrun. He who will “try to reach the level” of Bolt has taken the first step.
With AFP
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