If not for sport, I’d be a criminal, says Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo

Mumbai: If it weren’t for his teachers in primary school, Letsile Tebogo may not have gone on to become Botswana’s first Olympic gold medallist. Then again, the man who stunned pre-race favourite Noah Lyles to win the 200m sprint at the Paris Olympics last year candidly goes on to admit, if it weren’t for sport itself, he could so easily have been a criminal today.
“I was more of a footballer, I was a left winger, so I think the teachers from my primary school, they discovered that and they forced me to venture into athletics,” Tebogo told reporters during a video call on Wednesday.
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Switching from football to athletics, which Tebogo once considered a “part-time thing”, would prove to be a momentous decision for him and a country of just over 2.5 million people. His amazing triumph at the Stade de France in Paris last Aug came in an African record of 19.46 seconds.
You can imagine what it meant to the 21-year-old, who tragically lost his mother to a short illness that May. But Tebogo could also savour his moment of glory from a much deeper perspective considering the rough environment he grew up in.
“Sport has really helped me a lot because I think (if not) for sport, probably I’ll be a criminal by now because in the neighbourhood that I was growing up in, there were a lot of criminals. So we thought at that time that is the only way to survive,” he said.
“But then with sport, I knew I had to go to school, and from school training, you are tired. You don’t have plenty of time to roam the streets, go into people’s houses. So once I discovered that, I tried to pull in a few friends of mine, and they’re now playing football, and we always talk about how, if this didn’t work out, where would we be?”
You can understand why Tebogo has just been named as World Athletics’ ambassador for its Kids’ Athletics programme, a global initiative aimed at inspiring children across the world to be more active. It’s a responsibility he takes very seriously. “For me, it’s all about pushing myself to the maximum limits to try and take those kids from those unlawful behaviours and show them the direction, that they can still do something out of the sport they want to venture into, either basketball, football or whichever sport,” said the 2024 World Athlete of the Year.

He was joined by around 1000 children at his former primary school in Gaborone for the announcement on Wednesday. “So it’s just for me to push for them to really see that there’s no life in a criminal life. It’s limited, because you never know when it’s your day.”
Asked how life had changed for him and his countrymen post his historic win in Paris, Tebogo said: “Everybody’s lives changed, from my teammates to family. The Olympic gold has opened a lot of doors for the team because I can’t do this alone. There’s a team behind me that’s pushing me to reach the limits. It impacted everybody and I was happy to hear and see a lot of youngsters now more interested into sport.”
'Noah's arrogance good to sell our sport'
Tebogo also clarified what he meant when he played down talk of him becoming the face of athletics in the aftermath of his gold medal win, saying at the time he was, by nature, not ‘arrogant or loud’ like his American rival Lyles. “We do get along when you’re off the track, but when you get onto the track, it’s all about business. Then when we finish, we become friends and life goes on.
“But the arrogance...he’s good to sell our sport because he knows what to do. But with me, I’ll always shy away from doing that because that’s me,” he said.
In a season which will culminate in the world championships in Tokyo, Tebogo said he was prepared for the challenge of Lyles looking to avenge his 200m heartbreak in Paris. “Everybody who’s there on the lineup, it’s a rival. You cannot eliminate somebody because he didn’t perform well at the 2024 Olympics or 2023 World Championships,” Tebogo said. “It’s a new year, new beginnings, new goals.”