'It's important for a coach to travel with his athlete especially when she's a medal contender' - SA World Indoor Championships success explained
After becoming the first South African woman to break two minutes for 800m indoors, Prudence Sekgodišo went into the 2025 World Indoor Championships as a legitimate medal contender. And just like she did before reaching a maiden Olympic final in Paris last August, the 23-year-old ran a composed semi-final in China this weekend to book her spot in the final. But there was one key difference between those two global championship finals run just nine months apart. This time around, Sekgodišo had her coach Samuel Sepeng with her.
"It's important for a coach to travel with his athlete especially when she's a medal contender. There's a lot happening where an athlete can feel good the day before but on the day of the competition the body shuts down - remember they get nervous. So normally in our warm up we do 10 minutes but after a slow run in the semi's (2:01.21) I decided to add another three minutes, but pick up the pace, so the body can wake up and it helped. The dream came true. I was so proud for the federation to assist for me to be there," he told #TheTopRunner at the OR Tambo International airport today (25 March).
Where Sekgodišo was unable to get over the high of getting through and Olympic semi-final and struggled to a sluggish last place in the final, Sepeng accompanied the multiple SA champion this time to make sure that she remained focused and took the gold medal in 1:58.40 - a World Lead and a new national indoor record. That was the advantage that Akani Simbine also enjoyed who had Werner Prinsloo alongside him when he grabbed the bronze medal in the men's 60m - his first global championships medal after more than a decade of trying.
Cheswill Johnson on the other hand, put on another disappointing international performance as he slumped to twelfth place with a best jump of 7.64 despite leaping to 8.17 at the Germiston Stadium just six weeks before the championships in Nanjing. Asked if he could diagnose the source of the poor overseas results that saw him make no mark at #Tokyo2021 and register 4.49 at #Paris2024, the University of Johannesburg jumper could suggested that having coach Reneilwe Aphane with him when he travels could make the difference.
"For the most part I have proven that when I'm in SA and when I'm with my coach, I deliver. For example last year we had multiple jumpers jumping close to and over the 8m mark. and I still managed to beat all of them," explained the reigning SA long jump champion. "I feel like I could perform better if. I had my coach beside me because long jump is a very technical event and there are things that only my coach can tell me like getting my runway right. I don't want to use that as excuse. I failed to deliver at the World Indoors. If I had my coach with me maybe I could have done better."
Athletics South Africa (ASA) President James Moloi who present at the airport to receive the team this morning along with ASA High Performance Manager Hezekiel Sepeng reiterated the words of his Athlete's Commission Chairperson Hendrick Mokganyetsi saying in order to end the World (Outdoor) Championships drought which goes back to London 2017, ASA will try to assist personal coaches by raising funds for them to travel with medal contenders.
"As Athletics South Africa I think that's somewhere we can improve. I've seen that with the Americans, most of their coaches are there. We will make it a point to contact these athletes and their coaches and assist them to apply for the amount from World Athletics and where they encounter problems and are battling, we'll see where we can raise funds to assist where we can."
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