How Letsile Tebogo is taking a leaf from the Usain Bolt playbook as he sets his sights towards Paris

Deji Ogeyingbo has written several pieces on the young sprinter from Botswana, Letsile Tebogo. 

After a ground-breaking season, Letsile Tebogo is poised to take Paris 2024 by storm.

When fast-rising sprinter Letsile Tebogo won himself a Silver medal in the 100m final at the 2023 world championships in Budapest, he echoed a few words that showed many people how graceful the 20-year-old is even after he won. 

“If I had my way, I would give my medal to Akani Simbine. He deserves it more than me.” I know my time will come eventually, but I’m still grateful that I get to run with some of the best sprinters in the world.” How can a boy (in this context) who just became the first African to win a medal in the men’s 100m at the World Championships be this kind-hearted? 

Life, for the most part, knows how to create funny circumstances. However, it always rewards those that are true to their game. For Tebogo, he might have thought that Simbine deserved the medal, having gotten to the final of every major championship since 2016; the reality is he was the athlete who ran the full course, didn’t false-start, and was the second-fastest on the night of the men’s 100m final. After all, the time doesn’t make mistakes. 

As harsh as that may sound, Tebogo has made his own luck, propelled by his immense talent that we might just be seeing a reincarnation of Usain Bolt. It’s a word that’s thrown around loosely these days as fans are always keen to see a resemblance of what made them happy, and since the retirement of Bolt, the craving to see something similar has seen different narratives brought up. 

Of course, no two athletes can ever be the same. Different eras, personality types, and running styles make it almost impossible for that to happen, but with Bolt setting the standard for what sprinting is now, Tebogo can only aim to reach such heights. 

9.58s and 19.19s world record for the 100m and 200m still sounds utterly ludicrous 14 years after the Jamaican took Berlin by storm. How about winning a double in the 100m and 200m for three Olympic Games in a row?

While Bolt was the quintessential showman who drew crowds to every athletics meet, Tebogo just still looks like the guy who does this as an afterthought. Less we forget, the Botswanan is still growing and finding himself. What matters, ultimately, is what he does on the track.

It’s easy to bring up the numbers of Tebogo from this season and compare them to Bolt from when he was 20 years old, but it won’t put things into proper context. But as fate would have it, that’s where the similarities between Bolt and Tebogo begin to interject. And it gets really interesting because if you go deep into the numbers and medals the Motswanan churned out this year, it shares striking similarities with Bolt’s 2007 season. 

But as we know, it wasn’t until 2008 before Bolt began to truly take the world by storm. Can we say the same of Tebogo? In 2007, Bolt was seen as the next star of the sport. All potential at that point. Many were not sure what he would turn into. Tyson Gay was the superstar, and he beat Bolt to the 200m title at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka. 

A year later, Bolt turned the narrative and became the star of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In May of that year, he had also taken down the men’s 100m world record. Let’s stop there for a minute and draw parallels with Tebogo. Having taken the junior level by storm in 2021 and 2022 (he mimicked Bolt’s Beijing celebration at the U20 world championships in Cali by celebrating before the finish line), this year was his first full year as a senior, and although he played second fiddle to Noah Lyles in the 100m and 200m, you get the feeling that despite the prowess of the American, Tebogo will unleash his full potential. 

The first sign we saw this year was how Tebogo stretched Lyles in the 200m at the London Diamond League. Having broken the African Record by clocking an astonishing 19.50s, 0.03s behind Lyles, it shot him up to become the sixth fastest 200m runner of all time. “Usually, I do the overtaking in the last 100m, but I was surprised when I saw him (Tebogo) running at me.” Those were the words of Lyles prior to the world championships in Budapest. 

In Budapest, Tebogo wasn’t seen as a favorite to get a medal. He alluded to it, too. A spot in the final was all he had craved and was hopeful about how far he had progressed in the event he hadn’t mastered. Like Bolt, the 200m was his specialist event. So, it was surprising to see that he had picked a Silver in the shorter sprint. A few days later, he followed through with another Bronze in the 200m. 

Tebogo finished his season with a Personal Best of 9.88s in the 100m, 19.50s in the 200m, 31.52s in the 300m and 44.75s in the 400m. More importantly, the kid hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of his potential. Paris 2024 is still over 10 months away, and one can’t but help see how he’s becoming a full man. By the time the Olympics came, he would have turned 21, the same year Bolt became King. Who says Tebogo can’t take up the throne from Lyles by then?