While the president of Botswana announced an afternoon off for the country in celebration of Letsile Tebogo’s Olympic gold medal-winning performance in the 200m in Paris on Thursday night, there was no time to rest for the 21-year-old superstar.
After just three and a half hours of sleep, Tebogo was back on the famous purple track at the Stade de France to run the opening leg of the 4x400m relay heats with his teammates.
Leungo Scotch was initially listed as the opening leg runner for the 4x400m heats, but Tebogo explained he had suffered a knock and wasn’t in a position to run. Step up he did, giving the Botswana team a massive lead heading into the second leg. Tebogo handed the baton to Busang Collen Kebinatshipi with Anthony Pesela and Bayapo Ndori running the remaining legs to win the heat in a time of 2:57.76, over a second ahead of Great Britain and the USA.
“We are happy, the boys are happy, everybody's happy as a camper, and in Botswana, I believe they're also happy and all my African brothers and sisters are all happy,” said Tebogo.As for the celebrations back home after his 200m gold, the smiling champion reckoned: “I was happy that everybody was given time to rest up and just enjoy their day because it means a lot, because they stayed up last night. You could see the videos all over social media that everybody was happy back home.
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