Olympic 200m champion underlines the ability of sport as he turns into ambassador for World Athletics programme
Letsile Tebogo is aware of first hand simply how highly effective sport could be. Not solely has the Olympic 200m champion seen and skilled the life-changing results of his golden efficiency in Paris final summer season, however he additionally admits that pursuing athletics within the first place saved him from a lifetime of crime.
“Sport has actually helped me rather a lot as a result of I feel that, with out it … in all probability I’d be a prison by now,” stated the 21-year-old. “Within the neighbourhood the place I grew up there have been quite a lot of criminals, it was the one method to survive.
“However then with sport I knew I needed to go to high school and from faculty to coaching and with that you’re drained. You don’t have time to roam the streets and go into folks’s homes.
“So as soon as I found that I attempted to drag in a number of mates of mine … and now they’re enjoying soccer. We at all times discuss if this didn’t work out, the place would we be?”
He added: “I’m now joyful to see quite a lot of youngsters and other people of my age making an attempt to enterprise into one thing, as a result of now it means the crime charges are lowering within the nation as quite a lot of children are those which might be committing these crimes.”
The considered serving to the subsequent era to comply with an identical path to him was on the forefront of Tebogo’s thoughts as he spoke to a bunch of reporters through video name from Botswana on Wednesday (April 2). Following the interview, the World Athlete of the Yr met with round 1000 youngsters – together with pupils from his outdated major faculty – on the grounds the place he used to coach.
He was talking on the announcement of him changing into an envoy for World Athletics’ Youngsters’ Athletics programme, an initiative with the goal of inspiring youngsters the world over to be extra energetic. Tebogo will even participate within the Relay Across the World Problem forward of this yr’s Youngsters’ Athletics Day – which can happen on Could 7.
The World Championships 100m silver medallist didn’t begin out with athletics ambitions.
“I used to be extra of a footballer, a left-winger,” he stated, earlier than including: “The lecturers at my major faculty compelled me into athletics.
“[Athletics] wasn’t that fashionable in Botswana again then, till the Commonwealth Video games of 2018. From my aspect I simply wished to see the place it could take me. Athletics was only a part-time factor for me.”
Letsile Tebogo (Getty)
It’s to athletics’ nice profit that he caught with it and Tebogo heads into this new out of doors season with the next profile than ever earlier than. He has competed 4 instances up to now in 2025, throughout 400m, most just lately coming second to compatriot Bayapo Ndori on the Maurie Plant Assembly in Melbourne.
It received’t be lengthy earlier than his focus returns to the shorter sprints, nonetheless, and he will probably be in motion over 200m on the Golden Grand Prix in Botswana on April 12. The yr will culminate within the World Championships in September and there may be a lot anticipation in regards to the resumption of Tebogo’s rivalry with Olympic 100m and three-time world 200m champion Noah Lyles.
The American had been favorite to take gold over the half-lap contest in Paris however completed third as Tebogo grew to become his nation’s first ever Olympic champion and the fifth-fastest man in historical past along with his profitable time of 19.46. It later emerged that Lyles had examined constructive for Covid.
Within the post-race press convention final August Tebogo acknowledged he couldn’t be the brand new face of athletics as a result of he was not “an smug or loud individual like Noah”. Nevertheless, he insisted the pair hit it off and clarified these remarks.
“If you get onto the observe, it’s all about enterprise,” he stated. “If you end, you could be mates, life goes on. However the ‘vanity’ [of Lyles]… he’s good for promoting our sport. However, with me, I’ll at all times shrink back from doing that as a result of that’s me.
“Everyone who’s there on the line-up is a rival. You can’t remove any individual as a result of he didn’t carry out effectively on the 2024 Olympics or 2023 World Championships.”
Go to right here for extra data on World Athletics’ Youngsters Athletics Programme
