Gaborone (Botswana), Jan 15 Botswana's 200m Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo is set to begin his season with a 400m race at the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne, Australia on March 25. Tebogo is hoping to win the gold medal in the World Championships later this year and will be starting his season in Australia.
The athlete announced on his social media pages on Tuesday and Athletics Australia later confirmed his participation at the continental tour gold event on Wednesday. "The wait is over, the dates are in, and the countdown begins, first race of the season is confirmed," Tebogo teased with a statement before announcing that he will be stepping up to the challenge of the 400m in the season opener.
The 21-year-old Olympic 200m champion will compete in 400m at the Lakeside Stadium as he begins his season with eyes on the 2025 World Athletics Championships scheduled for Tokyo in September, reports Xinhua.
Despite competing mostly in the shorter sprints of 100m and 200m, Tebogo has done considerably well in the 400m and has not ruled out a possibility of competing in the distance at major championships in the future. He currently has a personal best of 44.29 seconds in 400m set in March 2024 and he also anchored Botswana's 4x400m relay team to silver at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Nicknamed 'School-boy', Letsile Tebogo won the gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in the 200-metre event, becoming the first-ever Olympic gold medallist for Botswana.
Tebogo is a double-medallist in the 2023 World Championships, winning the silver medal in the 100 m and following it up with a bronze in the 200m. The young sprinter is a two-time gold medallist in the World U20 Championships, winning the 100m titles in the 2021 and 2022 editions.
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