With over 80,000 roaring fans at the Stade de France, Letsile Tebogo blazed across the 200-meter finish line, dashing Noah Lyles‘ double gold dreams! After claiming victory in the men’s 200m final at the Paris Olympics 2024, Tebogo proudly displayed his shoe with a birthdate inscribed on it—an emotional nod to a tough personal battle. In Track and field, athletes face injuries and off-form slumps, but Tebogo’s struggle was deeply personal. “I’ve had such a huge blow that affected me deeply so I’m still trying to get the confidence back into the body. It’s not about injuries, it is all about my mum.”

This year, on May 19, the Botswanan athlete lost his mother, Seratiwa, to disease. With that, he lost his loudest cheering from the stand and the motivation to stand up again. Expressing that fatal blow on him, Letsile said in an interview posted on X by Thomas Mlambo, “I thought I was closing the season. I thought it was the end of my career.” Furthermore, the loss came when he was already on athletic duty.

He was in Italy to prepare for the upcoming Los Angeles Athletics Grand Prix, one of the important assignments before the Paris Olympics. The loss acted on him deeply, as he had to think about how to get things back on track again. However, Letsile Tebogo took his time to move on and rise like the Phoenix. The Paris Olympics are the biggest example. In the French capital, he came out, shedding the underdog tag. In the packed house of Stade de France, the 21-year-old displayed his character, first in the men’s 200-meter event and then in the 4×400-meter relay event in the men’s category. 

In the 200-meter event, Letsile Tebogo defeated pre-race favorite Noah Lyles and Tokyo Olympics medalist Kenny Bednarek. Before contesting the 200m, Noah had already won the 100m final, becoming the first US male athlete to do the same after the 2004 Athens Olympics. So on August 8, Letsile had to do an upheaval task to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. But did he remember his last game when he had countered the same opponent in the same event and his mother watched him from the box? 

Last year at the Budapest World Athletics Championships, Letsile Tebogo locked his horn against Noah Lyles in the men’s 200m final. However, Seratiwa ‘Sthado-Same’ Tebogo appeared in the audience to cheer his son up. After the race, her son stood in second place, whereas the American athlete took away the gold medal. Yet, the loving mother could churn out the positives from the race, conceding, “To say I’m excited is an understatement…Africa is so proud…I’m so proud that he put Africa in the map. It’s Africa before Botswana and so we are thrilled.” On August 8, Letsile dedicated his victory to his deceased mother. 

With the gold medal hanging around his neck and multiple African records in his resume, Tebogo acknowledged, “She’s watching up there, and she’s really, really happy.” But the journey to the podium was never easy. The athlete agreed to that and found himself lucky to have his supporting staff. 

Expressing their contribution to bringing him into the current position, he added, “I’m grateful for the team that was around me because they just told me to take each day how it comes. Don’t put yourself under too much pressure. So step by step, I started to start to want to run again. And then finally when we got on tune, I got it right.” Did you know his gesture in Paris was the fulfillment of a dream his mother had always hoped for?

Letsile Tebogo, the boy from next door to the Olympic champion 

In the interview with TheVoiceBW, Seratiwa Tebogo opened up about his son’s early days. The affectionate mother shared, “He is just the boy next door. You should see him at the cattle post doing everything any Botswana child does.” This down-to-earth upbringing gave ‘the boy’ the grit to make his mark among the world’s elite.

Seratiwa was convinced that the Paris Olympics would be the perfect stage for her son to shine. In the same conversation, Letsile’s mother mentioned that she would be present in Paris to watch her son climb through the ranks. She had planned to be there to cheer him on, but fate had other ideas. Even though things didn’t go as they both hoped, Letsile wasn’t deterred proving that sometimes the best stories are written despite the twists of fate!

On August 8, Letsile Tebogo stepped on the track wearing customized spikes from Nike. The spikes displayed the date “23-12-1980,” the birthdate of Seratiwa. “It’s basically me carrying her through every stride that I take. Me, to take her, it gives me a lot of motivation,” he shared after winning the 200m final at the Stade de France. In his most memorable moment, when the camera caught him, the emotional son proudly flaunted the date, where everything fell short except the showcase of raw emotions. It made the mother and son meet at some point, bridging their souls. Ultimately, Seratiwa had been not short of a proud mother, who once said, “Motherhood is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days, therefore every day is a celebration!”