Sepeng's Pearls of Olympic Wisdom for Sekgodiso

Be zombie-like in your mindset, that’s how you win a medal at the Games

As the 2024 Olympics fast approaches, some of South Africa’s medal winners from the previous Games find themselves in the grips of nostalgia, memories of their glorious experiences at the greatest sporting spectacle leaving them wishing they could roll back the years.

They can but just wish though, the ravages of age having taken its toll on them. To make up, those who can are passing on lessons from their momentous achievements on to the current crop of athletes, hopeful that the advice would be heeded to, and lead Team South Africa in bringing home medals from Paris 2024.

Hezekiél Sepeng is one of those. The 800m silver medallist from the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games is providing analytical support to his brother Samuel who is a renowned athletics coach guiding, among others, medal hopeful Purdence Sekgodiso.

With exactly two months to go before the Games begin in the French capital, Sepeng remembers what state of mind he was in back in 1996 at this time.

“Then, I was toying with two options to secure my future. I was sitting with a scholarship offer to study in the US and the Olympic Games were also an opportunity for me to make a name for myself,” Sepeng, now nearly 50 years old, recalls “My coach JP Van der Merwe and I discussed both and we decided to park the scholarship offer so we could focus on the Olympics. We aimed for me to reach the final because we knew that when you made the final you’d be praised for the next four years. You’d be labelled an Olympic finalist and get invitations to the big meetings overseas. Our goal was for me to reach the final and take up the sport full-time. If I didn’t I would go to the US and study on that scholarship.”

And so it was that Sepeng developed ‘tunnel vision’, his focus solely on his training and the goal of making it to the 800m final in Atlanta.

“I remember, I wrote my goals for the Olympic Games down and said 1996 is the first one to get experience,  so make the final’ For 2000 I want to win a medal and in 2004 I want to win a gold medal.”

Yet even some of the best-laid plans often fail, and it certainly looked like Sepeng’s objective of reaching the final would not materialise during the build-up.

“After I’d qualified for the Olympics I went to Europe and competed in a few meetings a couple of months before Atlanta. Things were not going 100 per cent according to the way I planned it. It was a bit frustrating but I still stuck to the plan and my goal of reaching the final remained.”

Sepeng’s one-mindedness was important during a time when distractions were aplenty.

“There’s a lot that happens after you’ve qualified because then everyone around you is excited for you and that could get to you too. But you’ve got to be in a different state of mind, you’ve got to be so focused that people think you are a zombie. In 1996, my mind was solely focused on making that final.”

He got to believe it was definitely a possibility on July 13 in Durham, North Carolina when he ran a 1:43:47 to break the South African record just recently set by Marius Van Heerden.

“It was about three weeks leading to the Olympics when things started truly building up. I ran the national record in North Carolina. I was suddenly number three in the world and those who understood these things were telling me ‘You can win the medal’.  But I did not take that to heart. I actually backed off and tried not to even think about it. I stuck to my goal of wanting to just reach the final.”

Reach the final he did alright. And he even got a medal, the silver as he finished runner-up to Norway’s Verbjorn Rodal.

Upon reflection, he says he probably should have believed in himself a little more. And that’s the advice he intends to share with Sekgodiso – the 800m medal hopeful he coaches alongside his brother Samuel.

Prudence Sekgodiso

“Samuel and I were talking just the other day and we agreed that we need to make sure Prudence gets into a different mindset because if you want to win that Olympic medal you have to be in a different zone. Unlike in my days, there can be no leaving anything to chance now. Back then anything could happen, but now you must make it happen. There are no shortcuts, and there’s no luck. You work for it (the medal) and you need to focus to the tee.”

Like most people who have followed her career, Sepeng believes Sekgodiso has it in her to finish on the podium in Paris, with the right mindset.

“Prudence can win a medal, she’s positive and she is in good shape. The only thing is that her mental state needs to be at a different level. She cannot just be happy to have qualified. So when she returns from Europe we will have a discussion with her and everybody who is around her – family, friends, and everyone close to her – to make them all understand that things have to change.”

Sekgodiso is going to have to be one-track-minded in the build-up to Paris, he says.

“She must be in the kind of state where people will label her as arrogant although that would actually not be the case. The way she must be focused has to be like she is a zombie. You cannot satisfy everybody when you are going for Olympic glory. It has to be all about you because others are just going to be disturbing you. I’ve seen it with guys like Caster (Semenya) and Wayde (Van Niekerk) – they have a different mindset. It is not that attitude of other athletes that, ‘Oh I’ve qualified and that’s good’. No, if you are really going for it, to win that medal, you need to be at another level.”

Imagine if he had been at another level back in 1996? Sepeng’s nostalgic memories could well be of the golden kind now. But Olympic silver is not too shabby, right?