South African sprinter Simbine shrugs off ‘nearly man’ tag

PARIS: In-form South African sprinter Akani Simbine insists he is no “nearly man” despite missing a podium finish in the men’s 100m at the last three Olympics by a combined total of just eight-hundredths of second.

The 31-year-old finished fifth at the 2016 Rio Olympics before successive fourth places at the 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Games. While he was three-hundredths of a second off the pace in Rio and four-hundredths away in Tokyo, he missed out on an individual Olympic medal in the French capital to Fred Kerley by just one-hundredth of a second.

His participation at the world championships have seen him place fifth (2017), fourth (2019) and fifth (2022) in the 100m. Simbine did eventually bag a global medal by anchoring South Africa to Olympic silver in the 4x100m relay in Paris.

He followed that up with world indoor bronze over 60m in Nanjing in March, a result that fired his season off and since then he has lined up three wins over 100m, including at the two opening Diamond League meets in China.

“People say that I’m the nearly man, I don’t see it like that,” Simbine told reporters ahead of this weekend’s world relays in Guangzhou. “I see myself as an athlete that’s never given up on achieving, that’s never given up on trying to be the best.

“I really came into the season with a different mentality from last year. It was more of coming into the season with the mentality of being content, in a space where I’m happy as me as an athlete and not letting my achievements of track define me in my career.”

Simbine added: “I know what my career has done, I know what my career is and I know what my career has shown to athletics. “I’ve proved myself to be an elite athlete and I’ve proved myself to be an elite sprinter. I don’t need a medal to kind of prove that. The medal is just a cherry on top.

“So having that tag as the nearly man, it’s noise at the end of the day.” Simbine’s three victories this season have all been in sub-10 second times, meaning he became the first sprinter to run under that barrier for 11 straight years, outdoing Usain Bolt’s previous record of 10 consecutive sub-10 seasons.