TOP TALENT South Africa's Akani Simbine will be hoping for another top season on the athletics track in 2025. Picture: Jewel Samad / AFP
Image: Jewel Samad / AFP
After an Olympic year that few could forget, 2025 promises to be a year in which veterans like Akani Simbine seek to fine tune their performances, while youngsters Bayanda Walaza and Bradley Nkoana will aim to further entrench their positions as burgeoning talent on the international stage.
First up though, Simbine will be working on improving his acceleration out the blocks as he competes in the 60m sprint at the Istaf Indoor Berlin on Friday, on Valentine’s Day.
Though Simbine won a silver medal in the men’s 4x100m alongside Walaza, Nkoana and Shaun Maswanganyi, he again missed out in the men’s 100m final at the Paris Olympics.
In fact, Simbine may just be the unluckiest sprinter ever, as he finished fourth in the closest men’s 100m final in Olympic history.
It was also the fastest men’s 100m final in history, with all eight men breaking 10 seconds for the first time ever at the Paris Olympics.
Simbine took fourth in 9.82 seconds, with Fred Kerley grabbing the bronze medal in 9.81. Noah Lyles claimed gold in 9.79 ahead of Jamaican Kishane Thompson in the same time - ahead by just five one thousandths of a second.
It was the closest 1-2 finish since the 1980 Olympics - and possibly ever since the technology did not previously exist to separate such small margins.
The career of Simbine has seen him come agonisingly close to medalling at the Olympics, as he took fourth in Tokyo and finished fifth at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
He has also been just as unlucky at World Championships finishing fifth in 2017, fourth in 2019 and sixth in 2022.
Simbine’s 9.82 is his personal best and the SA record, and there still may be time for him to better that mark in the twilight of his career.
Meanwhile, Walaza, who celebrated his 19th birthday last week, will have to juggle his training with his studies as he has enrolled at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). The explosive sprinter will be studying Supply Chain Management.
For Nkoane, 20, his immediate aim will be to qualify for his first World Athletics Championships and World Student Games in 2025.
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