Akani Simbine is leading South Africa's greatest-ever crop of sprinters

Daily Maverick

27-05-2025

There is seemingly a young, world-class sprinter around every corner in South Africa.
South Africa's sprinting stocks have been filled to the brim, and in some distances are pouring over.
Akani Simbine is leading a pack of mostly young, incredibly fast sprinters who are starting to dominate the track globally.
Simbine is in the form of his life, having won all five 100m races he's participated in this year, as well as opening his season with his first major medal, sealing bronze in the 60m Indoor Championships.
Three of those five wins have been at Diamond League events, with his most recent victory this past weekend in Rabat, Morocco, in a time of 9.95 seconds. It came against a strong field that included Kenya's Ferdinand Omanyala, two-time Olympic 100m medalist Fred Kerley — who finished second and third respectively — as well as America's Kyree King and Botswana's first Olympic champion, Letsile Tebogo.
The unprecedented run of success this year is built on a career of consistency by Simbine. In his first 100m race of the year, at the Botswana Golden Grand Prix at the start of April, Simbine ran 9.90 seconds — still currently the world lead — to become the first athlete ever to run sub-10 seconds in the 100m for 11 consecutive years.
For the better part of the past decade Simbine has been carrying the 100m sprinting baton on his own internationally, but over the last few seasons a plethora of world-class sprinters have landed on the track.
The one that has attracted the most attention is 19-year-old Bayanda Walaza. The attention is not unwarranted as this past weekend Walaza ran a blistering 9.94 seconds in Zagreb, Croatia — the fastest any South African under-20 athlete has ever run.
The speedy dash put Walaza firmly into the national record books, as the tied fourth-fastest South African across 100m of all time. Only Simbine (9.82), Benjamin Richardson (9.86) and Shaun Maswanganyi (9.91) have ever gone faster.
Depth
A sign of South Africa's incredible depth is that Richardson (21) and Maswanganyi (24) are not even at the peak of their powers yet. South Africa's greatest-ever sprinters are all active right now.
To add to them, Walaza'a 9.94 seconds is tied with Wayde van Niekerk and Gift Leotlela, whose personal bests are the same mark.
Van Niekerk's history of injury is well documented. Leotlela though, having set that mark in 2021, is nearing being back to his best, which adds another name to South Africa's sprinting base.
In April this year, 27-year-old Leotlela won the national championship title in the 100m dash in a time of 9.99 seconds, inching quicker than Walaza by 0.01 seconds. This victory came after a few seasons of injury and subsequent loss of form.
Leotlela beat out an extremely competitive field that included Richardson, who placed third. The standard of competition was so high that Bradley Nkoana (20) — part of South Africa's 4x100m silver medallist team at the Paris Olympic Games, as well as bronze medalist at the under-20 World Athletics Championships last year — didn't even make the final.
One-lap specialists
South Africa's strength in depth is evident in the one-lap sprint as well. While there is no one standout like Simbine in the 100m version of the sprint, there is a world-class young group developing.
The oldest of the bunch, Zakithi Nene (27), is having a breakthrough season of note after a disappointing Paris Olympic Games in which he failed to make the 400m final.
Since then, the visibly stronger Nene has been in incredible form. He ran a personal-best of 44.22 seconds at the National Championships in April, comfortably beating a strong field — in which none of the eight runners went over 46 seconds.
In Nene's most recent race, at the Diamond League in Rabat this weekend, he finished in a close second after being beaten at the dip by America's Jacory Patterson. Nene came in at 44.46 seconds.
Lythe Pillay (22) is another with supreme control over the one-lap sprint, but has struggled so far to consistently replicate the form that made him a junior world champion. Pillay is a two-time national champion in the 400m and has a personal best of 44.31 seconds, exhibiting his clear potential.
South Africa currently has two of the best under-20 runners in the 400m sprint coming through. Udeme Okon is only 19 years old and has already broken 45 seconds, claiming second place behind Nene at the National Champs in 44.99 seconds. He also won the Under-20 World Championship comfortably last year in Peru.
Schoolboy Leendert Koekemoer (18), meanwhile, has a personal best of 45.03 seconds — which also came at the nationals. Koekemoer and Okon, despite their youthful ages, were both part of the 4x400m team that claimed gold and a national record at the World Relays in Guangzhou, China, earlier this month. Not only do they have the talent, they have the mettle, too.
South Africa also has the always consistent Gardeo Isaacs, who along with Nene were the other members of the relay team, to fall back on as well as US-based Antonie Nortje.
South Africa's sprinting depth has never been this deep before. It means that while athletes like Simbine are a shoo-in for a podium position at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September, both groups of athletes are also capable of returning with gold medals around their necks at the relay portion of the event — as they did at the World Relays. DM