“I thought it was the end of everything.”
If it were up to him, Letsile Tebogo would spend this type of day somewhere quiet.
He’d enjoy a plate of Seswaa – a Botswanan national dish of shredded meat and porridge – while soaking in his monumental achievement.
Instead, a massive parade and a stadium filled with fans greeted him back in his home country.
The shy, reserved kid from a small village is now a national hero.
The president declared a half-day holiday so everyone could celebrate.
He met Pope Francis after the Olympics and got him to autograph his track spikes.
At the young age of 21, Letsile Tebogo has rewritten history.
Twice.
All while dealing with the tragic passing of his biggest supporter right before the Olympics started.
To say he beat ridiculous odds would be an understatement.
Of the 11,000 athletes who competed at the Paris Olympics, only 339 received a gold medal.
That’s only a 3% chance of winning gold.
Letsile Tebogo hails from the tiny village of Kanye – home to just 47,000 people. It’s about 56 miles outside of Gaborone, the capital of Botswana.
Not to mention, he didn’t even start taking track and field seriously until he was 16.
For context, AAU track programs in the U.S. feature runners as young as five.
When all those factors are added up, his odds of ringing the bell in Paris after winning gold were much lower than 3%.
And that’s not accounting for the unfortunate passing of his mother right before the Olympics.
Letsile Tebogo’s story began with his family moving to Gaborone when he was in the seventh grade.
Like many boys from the area, young Letsile dreamed of playing professional soccer.
Tebogo showed talent, but he couldn’t stay on the field.
Frustrated with constantly getting benched, he looked for a different path.
“Firstly, I used to run past people as a kid. Then I went to play football,” he said.
“For a while, I didn’t pay more attention to athletics until about 2018 when I realized I could go professional with it.”
In 2016, he took his first major step towards the track when he was called up to participate in an athletics competition in Kenya.
Up to that point, he didn’t even have the right shoes to wear.
The opportunity to travel outside of Botswana opened his eyes to what it’d be like to go pro in track.
But it would take three more years of stubbornly holding onto his soccer dreams before he went all in on his new path.
Tebogo made the official choice to focus on track and field in 2019 when he was 16 years old. That’s still a young age, but relatively old to begin taking the sport seriously.
Especially when compared to the kids on the AAU track.
Unlike many African athletes who ran before him, Tebogo excelled at shorter-distance sprints.
African countries like Kenya and Ethiopia routinely churn out world-class distance runners who dominate in the 800-meter, 1500-meter, 5000-meter, and marathon races.
But Tebogo wanted to change the perception of African runners.
“It means a lot to the African continent because now they see Africa as a sprinting home,” he said.
“So we just had to make sure that the message is loud and clear. It didn’t take so long, they were just waiting for me to step up.”
Letsile’s breakthrough came in 2021 as an 18-year-old when he made a big splash at the World Athletics U-20 Championships in Kenya, running the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints.
He won the 100-meter sprint in a quick time of 10.11 seconds. In the all-time record books, he trailed only his idol Usain Bolt for the fastest time in his age group.
Tebogo became the first Botswana athlete to win any kind of medal at a world championship meet.
And he was just getting started.
If his Kenya performance was the pregame, the 2022 U-20 World Championships in Cali, Colombia was the coming out party.
He became only the second teenage athlete to ever break the 10-second barrier in the 100-meter sprint at home in Gaborone.
Then in Colombia, he lowered that time to 9.91 seconds months later and won the 100 meters.
Tebogo was also second in the 200-meter sprint, finishing in 19.96 seconds – making him the joint third-fastest ever at the U-20 level in the 200 meters.
He fell short of gold by just .006 seconds – faster than the blink of an eye.
With his rapid three-year ascension, Tebogo created a buzz around the track world.
That’s when he left the U-20 circuit to run against the fastest men on Earth.
The 2023 World Championships in Budapest was his first competition as a full professional.
Letsile’s mother Seratiwa, his biggest supporter, made her way to the stadium unannounced to watch him make more history.
Seratiwa had never missed any of his major races.
Growing up, she did everything she could to support him and his dreams.
“She saw the potential in me through thick and thin,” Tebogo said.
“She was there every step of the way…she believed in me when I had so much doubt for myself.”
Tebogo became the first African to medal at the World Championships, collecting a silver medal in the 100 meters and a bronze in the 200 meters in Budapest.
“My mom, she’s just all smiles,” Letsile said at the time.
“The tears of joy were rolling down her cheeks. I was the happiest human being ever.”
By the start of 2024, he was firing on all cylinders.
He ran a personal best in the 400 meters in January and set a world record in the 300 meters.
He was gaining momentum to do something special at the Olympics.
Until tragedy hit.
At only 44 years old, Tebogo’s mother passed away after a brief but devastating illness.
Tebogo was crushed. He thought about quitting.
“I’ve had such a huge blow that affected me deeply so I’m still trying to get the confidence back into the body. It’s not about injuries, it is all about my mum… It wasn’t easy because I thought it was the end of the world…I thought it was the end of everything.”
Only a few months before the Olympics, he struggled to find the motivation to train.
He took a month off, unable to shake the grief.
When he slowly got back out to the track, it was only to watch his team practice.
They encouraged him to take it slow, hoping the spark would return.
He didn’t think it would, but eventually, Letsile grabbed his training bag and joined them for a session.
“The main goal for me…is running in the name of my mom. That’s where the dedication comes in.”
Fast forward to the Olympics and Tebogo was aiming to do something unprecedented.
No African sprinter has won the 100-meter or 200-meter sprints in modern times.
The last 100-meter win by an African was in 1908.
In the 200 meters, Frankie Fredericks of Namibia was the first African sprinter to win medals in the sprints at the Olympics. He won silver in the 200 meters in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996.
Missing his biggest supporter, Tebogo leaned on his strongest trait to help him on the sport’s largest stage.
“Mental strength is very important…once you have stress, you cannot run the perfect race you and your coach planned,” he told CNN.
“You need to come free-minded… Remove everything that’s on your mind that’s going to be disturbing you on the blocks or when you’re doing your warmup.”
Tebogo ran a blazing fast 9.86 seconds in the 100 meters – a personal best and a new national record.
It was also one of the closest races in history.
The top seven runners finished within seven-hundredths of a second of each other.
Unfortunately, he was unable to medal, coming in sixth.
That disappointment could’ve shaken his confidence and doomed him for the 200 meters. But he called on that mental strength again to steal the headlines.
Noah Lyles was the overwhelming favorite in the final, expected to dominate the 200-meter sprint. The brash American hadn’t lost a single 200-meter race since the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Lyles was also riding momentum.
He’d won his weaker event, the 100-meter dash, just four days earlier. He was favored to do the rare sprint double by winning the 100 meters and 200 meters in the same Olympics.
Lyles’ entrance onto the track for the final, showboating and hyping up the crowd, made it look like he already won the race.
But Letsile Tebogo had something to say about that.
“Athletes are all different, there’s the loud ones, there’s also the quiet ones,” he told Olympics.com.
“So I prefer being silent and just let the legs do the talking…athletics won’t change the person who I am.”
Empowered by the memory of his mother, Tebogo ran a personal best of 19.46 seconds in the 200-meter sprint. He came around the curve as if shot out of a cannon.
The lead he gained was big enough that he had time to slap the Botswana on his chest with emphasis while crossing the finish line first.
Tebogo followed up his historic upset with another incredible performance in the 4×400-meter relay.
In a race that isn’t his specialty, he closed the distance on the winning U.S. relay team in the final leg.
If he had just a few more meters…he would’ve pulled off another one for the books.
Either way, Tebogo single-handedly doubled Botswana’s Olympic medal total coming into the Olympics.
He used tragedy and a hungry, underdog mentality to rise to the top of the podium.
The hero’s welcome back home and the gracious gifting – two houses and several cattle from the government – could have satisfied him to settle down for a while.
But Tebogo showed he’s still hungry for more.
Just eight days after the celebration, he ran in another competition called the Diamond League.
He won five straight races in those meets before finally ending his season.
Today, Tebogo uses the memory of his mother to keep him motivated. He doesn’t take anything for granted.
“I always think about her, but I just try not to let it get into me that much and then just block it out and move forward.”
“Every step that I’m making on the track, I [treat it as if] it’s going to be a historic race because you never know how long your career is going to be.”
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