Thabo Matebedi communicates with his athletes on various levels, not least with his loud natural whistles that echo across the grass track at the Curro Hazeldean school where he works.
He effortlessly uses his tongue, teeth and lips to fire off his shrill instructions. One combination tells the athlete on the far side to get ready, and the next one a moment later is the command to go.
“My athletes can be on the other side of a stadium, but they’ll know my whistle,” said Matebedi, widely known as “Coach T”, who has emerged as a mastermind now handling some of the country’s most valuable track and field assets.
The 42-year-old Matebedi has been coaching for almost half his life, starting in the mid-2000s while still an aspirant sprinter, back in the days when the national 100m and 200m records stood at 10.06sec and 20.11 respectively.
He never got close to either mark himself, but this year he has guided Bayanda Walaza and Gift Leotlela to sub-10 performances and Sinesipho Dambile to 20.01.
Steered by fate
And they’re the tip of his iceberg, which features several promising schoolkids he regards as hot prospects.
Matebedi was seemingly steered into the sport by fate, both cruelly and comically.
Born in Atteridgeville, west of Pretoria, he was three when he was sent by his mother, a cleaner at Kalafong hospital, to live with his maternal grandmother in Sandfontein near Rustenburg after his father was killed in a road accident.
His father, a mechanic, had gone to help a friend whose car was stuck on the N1, but while he was working under the vehicle it was hit by a truck.
In Rustenburg, the young Matebedi found he was quick. “I liked running.”
One of the naughty boys
He was 14 when he returned to Atteridgeville, quickly joining his peers on the soccer field, impressing them with his speed there. “I was one of the naughty boys,” he said with a laugh.
He was 16 when he and some mates were watching an inter-schools athletics meet, drinking vodka on the sly. Matebedi looked at the athletes on the track and said to his friends: “Those guys cannot run faster than me.”
His friends agreed. “But let’s prove it,” they suggested.
The only snag was that Matebedi wasn’t in the track and field team, but they overcame that by going up to the sprinter who was about to represent their school in the 100m. They told him that a teacher, known to be particularly strict, was looking for him and the athlete went off obediently. “By the time he was leaving they were starting the 100m, so I went in on his behalf and that’s how I started running. I was drunk when I won the race.”
Matebedi went on to win the district and provincial championships, and finish third at the nationals — all without training. “There were coaches in Atteridgeville who saw that and they took me to athletics.”
The sport changed his life. “That taught me discipline, that taught me to take responsibility for my life. I’m very glad that I made the choice to be an athlete because one thing that athletics did for me, it made me a better person,” said Matebedi, who has six children — ranging from 19 years to eight months — with wife Lebogang, his high-school sweetheart.
“I’m living proof that athletics can actually change your life as a person. It may not be financially, but it will make you a responsible citizen.”
By the time Matebedi, then 26, got a scholarship to the University of Pretoria to study sports science, he had already obtained his level one coaching qualification.
After that he got a job at the Tuks high performance centre gym as a fitness instructor, during which time he started training athletes in Atteridgeville.
“There were boys that saw me running on TV, and they asked me to help them, so I opened a club in the township,” said Matebedi, who worked from 5.30am to 1.30pm and was back home by 3pm to coach.
When Tuks held trials while launching its high school, Coach T took his athletes along in a bid to get bursaries. His bosses had no idea that he was coaching on the side. “Instead of them taking my athletes, they asked them ‘who’s coaching you?’ because my boys were doing very well. So I was hired by Tuks to become a coach.”
He was assistant to Hennie Kriel, working with Leotlela, Clarence Munyai, Dambile and also briefly helping 2015 world championship 200m bronze medallist Anaso Jobodwana and Shaun Maswanganyi, a member of the 4x100m relay team that won Olympic silver last year.
In 2022 Coach T joined Curro, with his best known product to date being Walaza, who shot to prominence in the past year. Both Leotlela and Dambile have joined him there.
During our interview this week, Coach T couldn’t contain his passion, which almost warmed the chilly winter afternoon, like the steam coming off the Americano he sipped on.
His eyes twinkled as if he were glimpsing a glorious future visible only to him.
It’s hard not to get excited by Walaza, a member of the medal-winning 4x100 outfits at Paris 2024 and at the 2025 World Relays. He’s the under-20 double sprint world champion and, with 9.94 under his belt, he’s now the fourth-fastest South African of all time alongside Wayde van Niekerk.
Matebedi highlighted some of Walaza’s major advantages, like big match temperament and his big feet. It’s not that his size 8-and-a-half feet are particularly long, but they’re wide.
“The force that he hits the ground with, it’s something else.”
It’s the power that gives him that long stride. “The stride is not based on height, it’s based on how hard you can hit the ground and propel yourself forward.”
The sprinter already has a spectacular start, a weapon that he has used to good effect since the under-20 world championships in Peru last year. “He’s very dangerous over the first 60 metres, so I put more energy and effort and skill on that,” said the coach, admitting he had initially tried to change Walaza’s technique out the blocks.
“The first four, three steps, I want your tibia bone, what we call shins, to be parallel to the ground. Bayanda is not parallel to the ground, the knees are a little bit higher… he’s actually more upright. That’s what I wanted to change because that’s what the textbook says. But I realised I’m making him slow by doing that.”
Walaza's Achilles heel
The ability to think out the box is crucial for any coach.
When one of his schoolboy athletes complained this week that both his calf muscles were cramping after a set of sprints, Matebedi told him not to worry. “When both muscles are cramping, that means you’re working hard. When only one is cramping, then there’s a problem.”
But Walaza also possesses a noticeable Achille’s heel — the bobbing head and flailing arms that flare up at top speed.
In his last outing in Jamaica last weekend, Walaza lapsed into that bad habit — even worse than normal — when he tried responding to Olympic silver medallist Kishane Thompson’s attack at the end of the race. The movements slowed Walaza down and he slipped from second place to fourth.
Matebedi wasn’t fazed. “I’m going to do it [get rid of it] slowly but surely. As he gets stronger, that rocking and rolling of his head is going to go. He’s still weak physically, his muscles are not matured yet. As he matures, that thing will naturally go.”
2025
SA 100m champion: Gift Leotlela
SA 200m champion: Sinesipho Dambile
Two athletes in SA’s golden World Relays 4x100m team (Dambile & Bayanda Walaza)
2024
100m U20 world champion: Bayanda Walaza
200m U20 world champion: Bayanda Walaza
One athlete in SA’s Olympic silver 4x100m team (Walaza)
4x100m world best (39.92sec) by Curro 4x100m team
— Matebedi’s recent feats
I asked Matebedi how fast he thought Walaza could go when he hits his peak one day, and he mulled over the question before smiling. “For me, in my mind, I think the boy can run 9.6 when he turns 24, 25.”
Only three men have ventured into that territory to date — Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay and Yohan Blake.
For now he’s focusing on priming Walaza for the World Student Games in Germany next month. “He’s been competing so much he has not trained for two months. He’s been travelling, recovering, racing. I saw the speed endurance is now deteriorating, he’s losing fitness.
“The only thing we need to increase there is the speed endurance.”
For Leotlela and Dambile, Coach T has specific plans. He would like to see Leotlela’s 100m time down to 9.8 and Dambile’s 200m to 19.8 by the world championships in Tokyo in September.
The South African sprint revolution that began in 2014 when Simon Magakwe became the first athlete to break 10 seconds in the 100m has been led by stars like Van Niekerk, Jobodwana and Akani Simbine, forged by mentors like Tannie Ans Botha and Werner Prinsloo.
More than a decade later, with Matebedi playing a major role in the engine room, the discipline of speed in South Africa is undergoing an evolution.
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