Star Metro - South African sprinter Simbine shrugs off 'nearly man' tag

The 31-year-old finished fifth at the 2016 Rio Olympics before successive fourth places at the 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Games.

While he was three-hundredths of a second off the pace in Rio and four-hundredths away in Tokyo, he missed out on an individual Olympic medal in the French capital to Fred Kerley by just one-hundredth of a second.

His participation at the world championships have seen him place fifth (2017), fourth (2019) and fifth (2022) in the 100m.

Simbine did eventually bag a global medal by anchoring South Africa to Olympic silver in the 4x100m relay in Paris.

He followed that up with world indoor bronze over 60m in Nanjing in March, a result that fired his season off and since then he has lined up three wins over 100m, including at the two opening Diamond League meets in China.

"People say that I'm the nearly man, I don't see it like that," Simbine told reporters ahead of this weekend's world relays in Guangzhou.

"I see myself as an athlete that's never given up on achieving, that's never given up on trying to be the best.

"I really came into the season with a different mentality from last year. It was more of coming into the season with the mentality of being content, in a space where I'm happy as me as an athlete and not letting my achievements of track define me in my career."

Simbine added: "I know what my career has done, I know what my career is and I know what my career has shown to athletics.

"I've proved myself to be an elite athlete and I've proved myself to be an elite sprinter. I don't need a medal to kind of prove that. The medal is just a cherry on top.

"So having that tag as the nearly man, it's noise at the end of the day."

- Tokyo the goal -

Simbine's three victories this season have all been in sub-10 second times, meaning he became the first sprinter to run under that barrier for 11 straight years, outdoing Usain Bolt's previous record of 10 consecutive sub-10 seasons.

Simbine will headline a South African sprint quartet seeking to reclaim gold in the world relays in Guangzhou this weekend after previously winning in Chorzow in 2021.

The early-season Chinese swing is but a step en route to the world championships back in Asia, this time in Tokyo in September.

"At the beginning of the season, we always set a goal for the major championship, which is Tokyo," he said.

"And for me, that is to get on to the podium. But we're not even looking at it right now. We're just trying to make sure that we take each competition as it comes.

"We keep taking it week by week and trying to break the season down because it's such a long season. it's all geared up to be at our best in September and October."

Simbine credited his impressive start to the season to having had "a really great indoors" but said he wanted to peak later in the season.

"I'm not meant to be running 9.7 or 9.8 now in May. That doesn't make sense because we want to make sure we're at our best in September."

Looking even further ahead, Simbine admitted that a fourth Olympics, in Los Angeles, was on his radar.

"2028 is definitely the plan," he said. "But it might be my last Olympics. But we'll see. We'll see what the body says. If the body still allows after that, I will definitely stick around."

S.Belanger--SMC