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Comparing to past greats…

It gets long in the tooth comparing an up-and-coming athlete to a great of the past. In hockey, the many times athletes have been compared to Wayne Gretzky is immeasurable. Alexandre Daigle, Peter Nedved, Sidney Crosby, and Connor McDavid to name a handful. Who were the new Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, or Peles? It is considered unfair to the young athlete in terms of yet-to-be-achieved successes and exactly what those wins and stats mean to the sport during that particular era.

Bolt is considered right there in the pantheon of sports with those aforementioned names. His 9.58-second 100-metre sprint seems impossible. It seemed unlikely then and continues to, which is a rarity in athletics, as times march on. Did anyone think Kelvin Kiptum would come along and destroy Eliud Kipchoge’s 2:01:39 or 2:01:09 so soon? Much like Sammy Wanjiru, Kiptum was a shooting star who went dark as fast as he shot to fame. Wanjiru ran an implausible performance and set the Olympic record in the heat alone (before super shoes) at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games clocking 2:06:32. Kiptum and Wanjiru tragically died before their true potential was realized.

Kiptum ran just three marathons, all of them wins, all of them under two hours and two minutes: 2:01:53, 2:01:25 and 2:00:35. Before Kiptum was Kipchoge, who replaced Haile Gebrselassie as the greatest. Gebr’s 2008 world record of 2:03:59 still seems fast but it is now only the 56th-fastest in history (including Boston Marathons, which do not qualify for records).

Letsile Tebogo

In June this year, just three months ago, Letsile Tebogo turned age 21. He has a decade or more in front of him, yet the Botswanian athlete has won Olympic gold in Paris in the 200-metre event. In Budapest last year at the World Championships he earned a silver in the 100m sprint and a bronze in the 200m event.

His personal best in the 100m is a national record at 9.86 seconds. His personal best in the 200m at 19.46 is not only a national Botswana record, but an African record as well. In the longer sprint, he is already the fifth-fastest man in history with the ninth-fastest time. Only Noah Lyles, Yohan Blake, Michael Johnson, and Usain Bolt have been faster. Bolt ran 19.19 in 2009.

While running 9.86 seconds in the 100m sprint is indeed fast, the event is deep with repeated performances putting Tebogo a long way down the all-time list with the 158th-fastest time. Running eleven one-hundredths of a second faster would catapult him up from 158th to the top 10. A 9.75 is and is not a massive leap forward, depending. At age 21, there are many 100m sprints in front of him. Two years ago his best was 9.91. Three years ago 10.11. His 200m best at that time was 20.11. The faster the benchmarks, typically, the smaller the leaps forward, but based on his two to three years of improvements, Tebogo has much more left in him, to be sure. A 9.6X seems possible given the right circumstances and then he would be in rarified air with only Bolt, Blake and Tyson Gay.

At age 21, Bolt’s 200m best was 19.75 seconds. The Jamaican ran 10.03 by that time. Tebogo is miles ahead at the same age. Given the difference between super shoes and whatever Bolt was wearing at the time, the difference may be a wash, give or take.

Tebogo may be on the cusp of all-time greatness.

*Cover photo and X post from World Athletics images credit to: Chiara Montesano @chiaramontesan2

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