19 Feb 2024

February 17 is a date that will always be engraved in Batswana’s heart as the day that Letsile Tebogo, fresh from injury, managed to claim a 300metres new world-best time.

When the left for Pretoria to compete at the Simbine Curro Classic, a world-best time was not on the radar, but to check how a hamstring injury was doing.
During the off season, Tebogo and his coach Kebonyemodisa “Dose” Mosimanyane were busy at work fine-tuning all the tactics.

Mosimanyane said they were training for “return to competition,” as Tebogo finished last season with an injury.

“A hamstring does not heal easily, and when you think it has healed there is a high chance of an athlete feeling it during training or competition. Therefore there has always been that fear that it might recur, especially when working on his speed,” Mosimanyane said.

He explained that throughout the training, they had been very cautious, and they took a long time in general preparation. Such was the level of caution that they avoided spikes for a while, hence in the first competition of the year in Francistown Tebogo ran in trainers.
“Spikes challenge the body of an athlete in a different way, and they touch different muscles, and they demand differently compared to the trainers,” he said.

He said they did think about the world-best time last year after the athlete clocked a 31.54 which was also his Personal Best and World Leading Time at the same meet.
“We thought we should go for it either this season or next season, but after injury we scraped this season out, and felt we might create problems during an Olympic year. We felt since he is recovering, this would not be the year to take suck risks,” he said.

In that regard, Mosimanayane said they approached the weekend’s race based on the training they have been doing, adding that having competed in 400 metres as the season opener, he knew Tebogo’s body was in good shape.

“So the record did not come as a complete shock, although we did not plan for it. But there he is; he managed to bring it home,” he said. /END/BOPA/MM