For any athlete, making an Olympic team is an incredible feat. Winning an Olympic medal? Well, that’s just the pinnacle of their career. And that’s exactly how Olympic gold and silver medalist Letsile Tebogo once felt. That was, however, until he crossed the finish line on his home track and felt the roar from his home crowd. For Tebogo, that was the moment everything changed, and his Paris gold didn’t mean as much anymore.
If anything, as the delirious crowd screamed “Holiday” at the president, Duma Boko, urging him to declare the day a national holiday, it may have meant more. That is especially because Letsile Tebogo and Botswana’s 4×400 men’s relay team had led them to a gold medal at the 2026 World Relays. And for Tebogo, it meant more than his Olympic medals, as he attested to that in an interview.
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“Yeah, I think this has to be the best moment of our careers,” Tebogo said in an interview on X. “There’s more yet to come, but so far, this will be the, the, the biggest highlight of, of our careers.”
“It’s not about the Paris medals, the Budapest, the Tokyo medals, but it’s how the crowd, uh, held us together. Even, uh, what happened yesterday, they still believed that the guys could still do it.”
It was a scintillating performance from the quartet, with the squad’s average age of 24. And yet that didn’t seem to matter to them, as they set a championship record with a time of 2:54.47. Not just a championship record but a national record, the fastest ever recorded at the World Relays and the third best in history. No wonder the crowd wanted Duma to declare it a national holiday.
And at the heart of everything Botswana did was Letsile Tebogo. The 22-year-old first stepped up in the 4x100m heats, anchoring another young squad despite being the second youngest. Yet his experience and ability truly shone as he delivered a decisive final leg. So much so that despite taking the baton in fourth place, Tebogo flew beyond his competition to finish second.
It meant that for the first time in their athletics history, Botswana had qualified for the 2027 World Athletics Championship in the men’s 4x100m.
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“I knew I couldn’t disappoint,” Tebogo said, according to Olympics.com. “I had to find that sixth gear in me and make sure the team qualifies for Beijing.”
They then proceeded to replicate that in the 4x400m final after Lee Eppie gave the hosts an early lead with a 44.26 split. Tebogo took over the baton, and despite a 43.50 leg, Lythe Pillay flew beyond him.
The 23-year-old registered the fastest split in 4x400m history, clocking 42.66 to give South Africa the lead after the second split. However, Bayapo Ndori cut down the gap with his third leg before handing it over to world champion Collen Kebinatshipi. The 22-year-old managed to catch up to South Africa, held his nerve, and then flew forward with 100m to go.
Thanks to his leg, Botswana crossed the line with 2:54.47, shattering the championship record by nearly three seconds. South Africa came in a close second with 2:55.07, with Australia in third. But as it turns out, Tebogo and the team weren’t just chasing after the championship record, they wanted more.
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Letsile Tebogo reflects on breaking the 4x400m championship record
The pressure was on Botswana going into the final race of the weekend. After all, despite being hosts and despite qualifying for the men’s 4x100m at worlds, they had endured a tough World Relays. The home fans were forced to watch as their side first crashed out of both the 4x100m and 4×400 mixed relays in Qualifying Round 2. Then, despite their 4x100m women’s team finishing last in Heat 2 in their Round 2, marking another poor end.
The men’s 4x100m squad did make it to the final, but despite a time of 38.35, they finished sixth. That meant the pressure was on their Olympic silver medal-winning 4x400m men’s relay team. And did they deliver, breaking the championship record to ensure the hosts didn’t finish without a medal. Although, as it turns out, the team’s goal wasn’t the championship record, it was the world record.
“Even though the championship record was not part of our plans, the main plan was to break that world record, which I believe we attempted,” Tebogo said, according to Pulse Sports.
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“It is going to be so much trial and error until we reach that. Everyone here is not at their peak, I am not at my peak, yet we decided to push and get everything out of ourselves,” he added.
Unfortunately, their time of 2:54.47 seconds was just short of the 1993 world record set by Team USA, which stands at 2:54.29. Yet for Letsile Tebogo, that narrow miss hardly mattered in the grand scheme of things.
Because on a night when the crowd carried them, and history was made at home, the gold meant something far deeper than any Olympic medal he’d ever won before.
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