Botswana fills stadium to welcome back Olympian Letsile Tebogo after winning nation’s first gold medal
Letsile Tebogo and the Botswana Olympic team got a lot of love from the country as the citizens filled their biggest stadium to welcome them back from the Paris Olympics. Larry Madowo of CNN shared video footage of the event that included fans cheering the team while earing the country’s colors. This comes after Tebogo won two medals at the Olympics. He is the first athlete from Botswana to win a gold medal for his country.
Tebogo, 21, won gold in the 200-meter dash and silver in the 4×400-meter relay. The gold medal win was huge for Tebogo as he beat American sprinter Noah Lyles who won gold in the 100-meter dash. After the 200-meter event, Tebogo was asked if he could become the face of athletics.
“For me, I can’t be the face of athletics because I’m not an arrogant or a loud person like Noah,” Tebogo said of Lyles. “So I believe Noah is the face of athletics.”
After winning gold, Tebogo dedicated the medal to his mother who passed away last May. “I believe she could be one of the happiest people on the planet,” he said, per Olympics.com. “Because she believed in me and I had so much doubt for myself.”
Letsile Tebogo talks about his mother and training
Tebogo also talked about his mother before winning the two medals. “I always think about her but I just try not to let it get into me that much and then just block it out and move forward,” Tebogo said, per USA Today. “I believe there is a medal in these legs and it only needs the determination and the willpower to do it,” he added. “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.”
One of the interesting things Tebogo has done is train wothout shoes, but he did it for a good reason. “Shoes were more expensive and we couldn’t afford that because we lived with our extended family, so it was difficult for us to get things. [If you did], it would be as if you were the favored child, so things had to be equal,” Tebogo said. “So I used to train without shoes in both football and athletics. I would wear a pair of old pants that one of my uncles used to wear back when he was in school. It was just a generational thing.”
The post Botswana fills stadium to welcome back Olympian Letsile Tebogo after winning nation’s first gold medal appeared first on On3.
