Letsile's 400m call may be too loud to ignore

Mqondisi Dube | Wednesday September 24, 2025 06:03

However, indications are that he is more of a 200m specialist, and results are there to back him up as his only gold at either the Olympics or the World Championships came through the half-lap.

Since winning a silver medal at the 2023 Budapest World Championships, Tebogo has not had much success in the 100m.

Over 200m it is a different story as he is the top ranked athlete and was one of the favourites to land gold going into the recently concluded World Championships in Tokyo.

However, he was eclipsed by Noah Lyles, Kenny Bednarek and surprisingly, Jamaican, Bryan Levell as his Tokyo campaign threatened to unravel.

Following a disqualification for a false start in the 100m, it looked destined for a sad ending in Tokyo for Botswana's most celebrated athlete.

However, the tide generously turned on the last day of the competition when Tebogo powered the 4x400m team to a memorable gold, the first for Africa.

At the Paris Olympics, Tebogo also played a blinding role in leading the 4x400m relay team to a silver medal, with the fastest split of 43.03, which equalled Wayde van Niekerk's world record.

On Sunday, Tebogo's split (44.05) was the fastest, even better than that of newly minted world 400m champion, Collen Busang Kebinatshipi.

These are statistics that should be too hard to ignore for Tebogo and his team, when they look back at performances over the 100m, 200m and the 400m.

In the 100m, he was a dark horse for a podium finish with a powerful line-up that had the likes of eventual winner, Oblique Seville, Kishane Thompson, Lyles and Bednarek. Medal prospects appeared dim considering recent results in the 100m.

The 200m is his specialty and on another day, he could have turned fourth into third, but he was a bit off the pace. Looking at his performance in the 400m relay, it would not be far-fetched to think he could have outrun a number in the final, or possibly made it to the podium.

Tebogo has the endurance, comparable to that of legendary United States runner, Michael Johnson, a dominant 200m and 400m figure of the track in the 1990s.

He held both the 200m and 400m world and Olympic records at some point of a glittering career and there are a lot of similarities with Tebogo's technique.

It is not a given that switching to the 400m will yield results for Tebogo, but his performance over the one lap point to a caged tiger ready to be unleashed.

It is Tebogo's career and choice after all, but the loud bang of the knock to switch to 400m could just be getting louder.