Against all odds - Olympic gold medallist Thugwane’s heroic effort lit up the nation

16 Jun 2024

Josia Thugwane, SA’s first black Olympic gold medallist, was a surprise winner at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, winning the men’s marathon and capturing the attention of a nation.

The Olympic Games are littered with stories of athletes overcoming adversity to participate, and in some cases to win medals.

But few athletes could have come from a more difficult background, and would have trodden a more difficult path to the top of the podium, than 1996 men’s marathon champion Josia Thugwane.

The diminutive South African appeared to come from nowhere to win the blue-riband event of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics on a steamy August morning.

He wasn’t even supposed to be at the Games, coming in as a late replacement for the injured Xolile Yawa and recovering from being shot in a carjacking incident five months before the Games.

By winning the marathon, Thugwane made history in the most iconic of ways, becoming the first black South African to win a gold medal for the country just days after 800m runner Hezekiel Sepeng took home a silver in the men’s event. He was also South Africa’s second marathon gold medallist after Ken McArthur, who won the title at the 1912 Games in Stockholm.

Thugwane, whom most South Africans were unaware of before the Atlanta Games, captured the attention of the nation for a brief time on that cool Sunday afternoon in South Africa.

As word spread that a South African was leading the Olympic marathon, televisions started going on and people gathered to watch history unfolding.

Most casual sports fans had heard of South Africa’s two other marathon entrants, Gert Thys and Lawrence Peu, who had been prominent on the local and global circuit.

But when they tuned in, the tiny South African wedged in a three-man breakaway with Kenya’s Erick Wainaina and South Korea’s Bong-ju Lee was named Josia Thugwane.

Not even the commentators knew much about him, but as the kilometres ticked off, South Africans became glued to their screens.

Historic moment

Earlier in the race, Thugwane, Peu and Thys surged to the front of the field at the 25km mark. It was a massively symbolic moment because this was the first Olympic Games as a democratic South Africa, coming two years after Nelson Mandela had been sworn in as president.

On that morning, a little more than an hour into the race, three black South Africans briefly led the most famous race of the Olympics – named the marathon in honour of the place by the same name.

A group of about 20 runners eventually surrounded the South Africans, but it was Thugwane who took the fight to the rest of the field.

He attacked, which in marathon running terms means he put in a spurt of acceleration to try to detach himself from the group. But they responded and neutralised his first sortie. Undeterred, Thugwane regathered himself for a short while and then made the decisive attack at the 35km mark.

Only Bong-ju and Wainaina could stay with Thugwane’s unrelenting pace this time and the trio quickly opened a healthy lead on the rest of the field.

The three men worked together to ensure there were no surprise attacks from behind. But when the Olympic Stadium came into sight, with about a kilometre to go, Thugwane, finding something deep in himself, kicked again.

The South Korean and the Kenyan didn’t have the legs to stay with the South African. Thugwane entered the sparsely populated stadium (it was a little after 9am) and completed the one lap around the track before the finish line, with Bong-ju and Wainaina close, but not close enough.

Thugwane crossed the line in 2:12:36, only three seconds ahead of Bong-Ju, for the closest marathon finish in history.

Thousands of kilometres away, in clubs, pubs and homes, South Africa exploded.

It had been a good Games for South Africa, with Penny Heyns winning a double gold in the pool, Marianne Kriel a swimming bronze and Sepeng, of course, taking a medal on the track. But Thugwane’s triumph was unexpected and inspiring.

Tough life

Thugwane was the embodiment of most South Africans’ reality at the time. Born into poverty, uneducated under the apartheid system and, like most of his countrymen, forgotten and uncared for.

Raised on a farm in Bethal in Mpumalanga, Thugwane didn’t have much. One day, as a young boy, he watched several men running past his home on their way to the nearby town of Kriel. He asked if he could join them and they agreed.

Thugwane outran most of the older men and they were so impressed that he was invited to train with them at their running club. Little did anyone know that that 34.2km morning run from Bethal to Kriel would be the building blocks of an Olympic champion.

Thugwane soon entered races, and he came fourth in his first formal event – a 21km half-marathon. A few weeks later he finished fourth again in his first competitive marathon at Sun City, all while he was still a junior.

It was a theme that would repeat itself, much to his frustration, as he came fourth in SA trials for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and missed out on selection.

But that just fuelled his determination and in 1995 he won the Honolulu Marathon.

To add to the narrative of a man who defeated more odds than most, he was shot in a carjacking incident just five months before the Atlanta Games.

The bullet grazed his chin, but he suffered other minor injuries in the incident. He fought his way back to fitness for the Olympics.

Thugwane rose to the summit of his sport through a combination of innate talent and supreme hard work, but he looked back with mixed emotions.

“I never had an idea that the Olympics were such a big thing. All I had aimed for was to run for Nelson Mandela because he brought us freedom,” Thugwane told News24 in 2014.

“But on the flip side, the win brought as much trouble to my life as it brought joy to the country. Some people in my community were jealous of my success. On some days I woke up to baboon heads mounted on my gate.

“There were several incidents where I was attacked while I was jogging. My attackers knew who I was and they had the impression that I was rich and always carried cash. I had to outpace them when they were in pursuit.”

For Thugwane nothing has come easy, but for little more than two glorious hours, he brought hope and joy to the nation. DM

Craig Ray is the sports editor of Daily Maverick

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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