Legends: Wayde van Niekerk’s Record-Breaking Moment at the 2016 Olympics

“[At] that moment, your emotions are so loud. All the doubts and fears just started jumping onto me and I started questioning myself like crazy. I remember being in tears for a bit, and as the soldier finished, I put on my hoodie, zipped it up, put in my earphones and I was like, ‘Yo, shake this off, a job needs to be done,’” he said.

He got to the call room and immediately felt intimidated by the names he was racing against.

“There's two athletes that I really respected a lot, which were Kirani James and LaShawn Merritt. And I knew what powerful athletes they were. So immediately in my head [I] was like, ‘You need to get away from these two as soon as possible and as far as possible.’ And as we proceed from the call room to the track, I'm sitting there and I'm like, ‘okay, gold medal.’”

As soon as the gun went off, van Niekerk, who was in the unfavorable eighth lane, pushed the hardest he had ever pushed. He opened a wide gap for the first 100m, but that nearly changed as James, the 2012 gold medallist, came creeping behind as they approached the 150m mark. The near-standoff was short-lived, however, and van Niekerk opened an even wider gap as he approached the finish line, leaving Grenada’s James and the U.S.’s Merritt in second and third places respectively. The rest of the stadium rejoiced at the victory, and van Niekerk went to the stands to hug the family members who had joined him at the Olympics.

”My mentality was just like, ‘Get [to] your family so you can recover.’ And then when I finally got to them, that’s when I could actually receive the celebration, like feeling and emotions and all that stuff,” he said.

As it turned out, van Niekerk was, “very ignorant to the sport.” “I had no idea who Michael Johnson was. I know that he had a book. I know that it was very quick, and I know that he competed against Frankie Fredericks. And I think that helped me a lot because I never used to premeditate on what he's achieved and what I need to do to be the next best Michael Johnson or study his way of doing things.”

His winning streak continued into the following year, when he claimed gold for the 400m race at the World Athletics Championships for the second time, the first being in 2015. He also finished second in the 200m race, making him the first South African athlete to land two individual sprint medals during a single competition.

Later that year, the world champion suffered a career-threatening injury after rupturing the ligament in his right knee during a celebrity touch rugby match. This unfortunate incident kept him out of commission for the rest of 2017 and 2018, which meant that he couldn’t compete during that year’s Commonwealth Games.

He told the Olympics that he regretted every moment for the first two months post-surgery, “especially when it came to simple things like walking again, balancing, stretching, keeping stable and even getting up to get something to drink. All these simple things became so challenging in my day-to-day routines that I'd always end up irritated and regretting the position I was in.”

Van Niekerk is looking forward to competing at this year’s Olympics in Paris, where he’ll be running in the 200m race, replacing Luxolo Adams, who has said he’ll seek urgent legal intervention on the replacement.

This year’s Olympics is a bit more special for van Niekerk. His sister Kayla Swarts, a member of the female hockey team, will also be competing. “I am excited for that moment,” van Niekerk told former Springbok rugby players Juan de Jongh and Rudy Paige on their Behind the Ruck Podcast. “It is a good motive for me as well to be in my best shape. I am about to share the Olympic Games with my little sister, and I am excited about that. So, it is about putting in that hard work now and seeing what comes tomorrow,” he added.

Going into Paris 2024, van Niekerk told SABC in April that he has “learned from past mistakes and don’t want to repeat them by putting unnecessary pressure on myself.” His focus? “Enjoying the experience rather than concentrating only on my performance.”