Relay king Akani Simbine finally wears his crown

Minutes before the 4x100m relay final in Paris on Friday night, Akani Simbine stood motionless on the home straight, facing the finish line and gazing into the distance, as if he were glimpsing his destiny.

The 30-year-old had just completed a short practice run and was alone on that section of the track. In that moment, he seemed oblivious to the crowd and his rivals, focused only on the task ahead — an Edmund Hillary contemplating his Everest.

Soon afterwards, the world’s greatest sprinter never to have ascended the podium at a major meet, hurtled down lane seven at Stade de France to bag South Africa’s first ever Games medal in this event.

Simbine had received the baton in fifth place, but he always knew he needed only a sniff, and he steamed through his leg in 8.78 seconds to take his team over the line in a 37.57sec African record.

The veteran has been one of the most dangerous relay anchors for the past 10 years — first showing his ability at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where he pulled a South African outfit to fourth. He was second-fastest that night behind legendary Jamaican Usain Bolt.

Since then Simbine has been waiting for the baton to get around to him in a strong position. He has watched it fall and stall at various spots on the track over the years. And when it was placed into his hand, like at the 2019 and 2022 world championships, South Africa ended fifth and sixth.

At the 2021 World Relays they took gold only for it to be stripped after one of the team failed a dope test.

This rotten luck seemed par for the course for a sprinter who kept narrowly missing individual 100m medals — like his fourth place in the final in Paris last Sunday — by one hundredth of a second.

He was fourth at Tokyo 2020 and fifth at Rio 2016; at the world championships he ended fourth in 2019 and fifth in 2017 and again in 2022.

His three fourth places and three fifths were a combined 0.32 off the podium. Simbine had been a blink of an eye away from super-stardom.

Since the world championships were staged every second year, the only sprinters to have been in the top five of the world for longer than the South African were Bolt and American Justin Gatlin.

Simbine had achieved everything under the sun — Commonwealth Games champion, African champion and more than 40 sub-10 100m times to his name. He has dipped under 9.9sec over an eight-year stretch, ranking him sixth in longevity. 

But without a medal, it meant nothing to many people. Simbine gets no mention on the Netflix series Sprint.  

His miss in Japan three years ago cut deep into his soul, leaving him wanting to quit the sport. But the father of two, with the help of counselling as well as the support of his Swiss wife, rediscovered his love for track and field, and this year he returned with renewed purpose, passion and precision.

The medal won by himself, schoolboy Bayanda Walaza, economics graduate Shaun Maswanganyi and coaching sciences student Bradley Nkoana is worth even more than its already valuable status as Olympic silver.

It’s the final sign-off on South Africa’s much-vaunted sprint revolution dating back to the 2015 world championships, where Wayde van Niekerk won his maiden 400m crown and Anaso Jobodwana the 200m bronze.

This silver also endorses Simbine as an all-time great of world sprinting.

Make no mistake, he made that relay medal happen. Without him there was no silverware.

That’s not the line Simbine spun afterwards. He’s always been humble about his abilities, and he knows he didn’t do it alone. He praised his teammates. “I’m grateful for these kids and these guys for running with me and pushing us to this medal.”

Maswanganyi, Nkoana and Walaza — who admitted he hadn’t done as much online school work as he should have — all played their roles brilliantly. But on Friday night they were lifted to greater heights by a giant — a king who has his crown at last.