Letsile Tebogo: the schoolboy from Kanye who gave Botswana Olympic gold
World junior record holder at 18, Olympic 200m champion at 21 and World Athlete of the Year: the sprinter's rise in numbers.
Gaborone — On 8 August 2024 in Paris, Letsile Tebogo crossed the line in the 200m in 19.46 seconds, an African record, and gave Botswana its first ever Olympic gold medal. The country declared a public holiday. He was 21.
The rise
- Born: 7 June 2003 in Kanye, Botswana. His nickname is "School-boy".
- 2021: world U20 champion over 100m in Nairobi, the first Motswana to win a 100m world title at any level.
- 2022: first Botswana man under 10 seconds for 100m; then 9.91, a world U20 record, in Cali; youngest-ever African 200m champion.
- 2023: world silver in the 100m and bronze in the 200m in Budapest.
- 2024: Olympic 200m gold, Olympic 4x400m relay silver in an African record, and World Athletics Male Athlete of the Year.
- 2025: world gold in the 4x400m relay in Tokyo.
- 2026: World Relays gold at home in Gaborone, in another African record.
The records
- 200m: 19.46, African record
- 100m: 9.86, Botswana record
- 300m: 30.69, world best
- World U20 100m record: 9.91
Off the track
He won the Jesse Owens Rising Star Award, the first man to do so, and became a World Athletics Kids' Athletics ambassador. In February 2025 he was praised for helping pull cars out of floodwater in Gaborone.
Tebogo, and the relay team around him, have made Botswana one of the world's sprinting powers.
Background: Wikipedia.
