Botswana's sprint surge faces pipeline threat as school programs stall

The final stretch of the men's 4x400-meter relay at the World Athletics Relays in Gaborone belonged to Botswana. Collen Kebinatshipi, running the anchor leg, caught and passed South Africa's Zakithi Nene in the closing meters as the home crowd—a sea of light blue—erupted. It was the kind of moment that defines a nation's relationship with sport, the kind that gets replayed and remembered. Letsile Tebogo, the 22-year-old Olympic champion who had run the second leg, spoke afterward with the weight of something larger than athletics in his words. "It means so many things to us," he said. "Not just the team, but for the people that always cheer for us behind the TV. Now they had that experience to see first-hand how much effort, how much pressure, how much we give for them."

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, who has watched sport at the highest levels for decades, ranked the atmosphere among the three most electric he had ever experienced live—alongside Cathy Freeman's Olympic moment in Sydney and Mo Farah's surge in London. For a country of 2.5 million people, larger in land area than Spain but modest in population, this was validation of something improbable: Botswana had become a men's sprinting power. Tebogo's gold in the 200 meters at Paris in 2024 was the nation's first Olympic gold medal ever, and only its fourth medal of any color. The relay team had taken silver. Then came Kebinatshipi's individual 400-meter world championship title in Tokyo, followed by another relay gold. The athletes had become billboards themselves—their faces advertising everything from mobile phone contracts to milk.

Kebinatshipi, 22, had started running at school. Now he needed half an hour to navigate a shopping trip because of the photographs fans wanted. "At first I was a bit nervous, because I wasn't used to it," he said. "Nowadays I'm used to it, so it's cool with me." The rise had not been accidental. Years of deliberate investment in young athletes had built the foundation. Mabua Mabua, the Botswana Athletics Association's chief executive, credited the school sports programmes above all else. "Basically all of the athletes that you are seeing, the youthful ones, are coming from that programme," he said. The country had also built local infrastructure—coaches trained at home, training done at home, no need to chase preparation in Europe or the United States.

The Botswana National Sports Commission ran talent identification and development across 15 sports. Re Ba Bona Ha, meaning "We See Them Here" in Setswana, was a coaching initiative launched for football in 2002 and extended to athletics in 2008, drawing up to 300 children annually. Twice yearly, holiday camps identified older students for eight centres of sports excellence, established in 2011, where 30 to 40 young athletes were selected each year for intensive training. The system worked. It produced champions. But it had a critical vulnerability: the school sports programme was suspended in 2019 following a dispute between the government and teachers. Without it, officials warned, the pipeline would collapse. "The pipeline is not there," said Martin Mokgwathi, who chaired the world relays organizing committee. "Performance will dip unless something is done very, very quickly."

The women's side of Botswana's athletics told a different story. Oratile Nowe, the seventh fastest woman in the world over 800 meters this year, represented the country's highest female performer—a gap that officials acknowledged required urgent attention. Mokgwathi spoke of the need to widen the pipeline for young women, to recruit more female coaches and technical officials, and to create protections ensuring young women stayed in the sport. Into this gap stepped Isaac Makwala, a retired sprinter who had been the first man to run 400 meters in under 44 seconds and 200 meters in under 20 seconds on the same day. The son of farmers from northern Botswana, he had started running at school but did not compete until age 21. After retiring in 2024, he founded the Isaac Makwala Athletics Academy, putting roughly 50 young athletes aged 12 to 16 through sprinting drills five afternoons a week. "I have a daughter here, she drives me to be a coach," he said. "I want to see how well she will run after."

His daughter, Resego Kelly Makwala, became Botswana's under-18 girls 400-meter champion at 14 years old. "I do really like it," she said. "The times. When I make good times, PBs." But Makwala's academy depended on parents who could afford the fees—100 pula for registration, 500 pula monthly. Tuduetso Gaboutloeloe, a tax collector, had enrolled her 13-year-old daughter Leloba, who ran 800 meters and wanted to try 400 meters too. "I want to be honest with you, the way the economy is bad, I want to see her going places, maybe getting a scholarship so she can progress very well," Gaboutloeloe said. "Because right now, it's a struggle." Leloba dreamed of Olympic medals. The question now was whether the nation's momentum could survive the gap in its pipeline, and whether the next generation of athletes—particularly girls—would have the support to chase those dreams.