Akani Simbine has transformed 100m sprinting in South African athletics more than most people realise.
The 31-year-old speedster, who jets off to China this week to get his Diamond League campaign under way on Saturday, has been viewed in some quarters as the guy more famous for missing out on individual 100m global medals — but that overlooks his contribution to local sprinting.
Simbine’s abilities were on display during the men’s 4x100m relay at the Paris Olympics, where he delivered two sensational anchor leg performances for South Africa, first running them from nowhere-land into the final, and then from fifth place to the silver medal.
But it’s easy to forget his trailblazing role, starting from before South Africa had even registered a blip on the world’s 100m radar.
Simbine was a youngster finishing second when Simon Magakwe became the first South African to dip under 10 seconds in Pretoria in 2014; now he’s the face of speed.
When he equalled the national record in 2015 and took it for himself early in 2016, his adidas sponsor noticed his potential, but he was a newcomer and his coach, Werner Prinsloo, was unknown.
They quickly offered Simbine the chance of relocating to Jamaica to train with world record-holder Usain Bolt under coach Glen Mills. “That was a 100% thing, like I was gone 2016 to 2017,” Simbine told the Sunday Times.
“I was on my way out. I was going to go to Jamaica and study there, and they had arranged a college for me, and I was going to live there … but it didn’t work out because the whole arrangement was that if I make the Olympic final, then I don’t have to go.”
But in 2017, ahead of the world championships, adidas was still keen to get him overseas. “[They] didn’t see what coaching we had in South Africa. For them it was like ‘we need to put you in a place where it’s conducive to you to become the best 100m sprinter that you can become’, and I was for that. I believed in that.”
But making the 2017 world championship final convinced his backers that he and Prinsloo were making the right music. “[They] said, ‘okay, it’s fine, do your thing, it’s working’,” recalled Simbine, who also turned down offers to switch allegiance to Sweden and UAE.
The relationship between Simbine and Prinsloo is one of the great partnerships of South African sport. It’s up there with the likes of Rassie Erasmus and the Springboks and deceased boxing manager Mzi Mnguni and fighters such as Welcome Ncita, Vuyani Bungu and Mbulelo Botile.
When they linked up Simbine was 16 and Prinsloo was a greenhorn. “The first five years, I was literally just absorbing a lot and I was very lucky that I came into the era of Usain, Tyson Gay, Asafa [Powell] and Justin Gatlin. It benefited my career,” said Simbine, who applies the principles these days to business, running BackSports, which does filming for SuperSport among other clients.
The adrenaline flows faster in the boardroom these days.
“A lot of challenges, a lot of stress, a lot of sleepless nights. But I’ve got a great team around me. Getting on a track in front of 80,000 people in the stadium, to me that’s normal.”
Simbine’s success as a sprinter was Prinsloo’s success. “He started getting respect from the circuit because of how well I was doing and he also started making relationships with other coaches and other coaches would start asking him questions. We were just figuring this thing out every year.”
Simbine was quick as a kid growing up in Tembisa where soccer took preference before he switched to track and field. “It was fun, it was carefree. You get home, you run around, my mom comes back later on in the afternoon and fetches me and we’ll do homework.”
One childhood memory stands out for him — the celebration of spring day every September.
“When you get off of your transport, literally, there’s kids waiting outside with buckets of water and balloons to throw at you. You just come home soaking, which is fun. You change, then you get a bucket and you go wait there at the corner for the next kid to come out of their transport and throw water at them. That’s the best time because my sister and I used to do it together.”
And then there was the sweet tooth, with a preference for sour ones. “They just have to be sour, [then] I’m in heaven,” said Simbine, who used to take a packet of sweets, squeeze them together into a giant jelly bean before demolishing it.
“That would be my favourite thing to do.”
He still enjoys them, although not in the same quantity. “If I finish a packet in one day, then tomorrow I’m going to probably suffer in training.”
That’s the discipline — or deprivation — required by a professional athlete. Simbine avoids fatty foods, especially take-aways, and he also avoids doing other sports.
The married father of two has yet to play padel at the golf estate where he and his family live. He kicks a soccer ball around, but even then he is careful. “I don’t move from side to side, I control my movements because my body’s not used to moving certain ways.”
Even the occasional round of golf — “I’m terrible, I don’t play on score. I just go and hit” — has to be carefully factored in.
He won’t play within a week or so of racing. “It also tightens up your back. I need to plan, I need to tell my physio that I’m going to play golf today and see her tomorrow so she can reset my back. She also doesn’t like me playing, but I need to do something.”
Simbine and Prinsloo took on indoor competition this year as part of their preparation towards the world championships in Tokyo in September, looking to improve on his 9.82 South African record set while finishing fourth at the 2024 Paris Olympics (by the way, one of his best sprinter friends is the man who edged him off the Games podium by one-hundredth of a second, American Fred Kerley).
Simbine won the world indoor championship 60m bronze in China last month, but the real benefit is looking for extra speed in the early phases of his race by smoothing out his acceleration rate.
“[That] adds up to me running 9.7.”
And that is medal territory and more trailblazing.
STATS
Akani Simbine in the 100m at Olympics and world champs (event, position, time, time off the podium):
Rio 2016 Olympics — 5th 9.94 (3/100ths)
London 2017 — 5th 10.01 (6/100ths)
Doha 2019 — 4th 9.93 (3/100ths)
Tokyo 2020 Olympics — 4th 9.93 (4/100ths)
Eugene 2022 — 5th 10.01 (12/100ths)
Paris 2024 Olympics — 4th 9.82 (1/100th)
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