For Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo, the Wanda Diamond League Final in Brussels delivered a bittersweet end to a brilliant season.
Just a month after he won his country’s first ever Olympic gold medal in the 200m in Paris, Tebogo narrowly missed out on his first ever Diamond Trophy in a surprise defeat to US rival Kenny Bednarek.
Yet every cloud has a silver lining, and Tebogo still went home from Brussels with another prestigious trophy for his mantlepiece.
The 21-year-old’s 19.80 was the best performance of the final by a male athlete aged 23 or under, making him the first ever winner of the newly inaugurated Jesse Owens Rising Star Award.
A collaboration between the Owens family, the Jesse Owens Foundation and the Wanda Diamond League, the award honours the legacy of the one of the sport’s biggest names while also highlighting the best upcoming talent in track and field.
Tebogo’s triumph saw him take home a bronze statuette of Owens, the American sprinter who made sporting history with his four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.
It was a fitting finish to an extraordinary season for the Botswanan.
As well as his historic achievement in Paris, Tebogo also notched up a total of five victories en route to the Wanda Diamond League Final.
The first came on the eve of the Olympics in Monaco, where he streaked to an impressive 19.87 to comfortably beat Alexander Ogando of the Dominican Republic.
Tebogo took the momentum of that victory into the Olympics, before riding the wave of success into the latter part of the Diamond League season.
He returned to Diamond League action with another victory in Lausanne in late August, clocking 19.64 to win at the same meeting where he had picked up his first ever Diamond League victory the previous season.
That kickstarted a run of four straight Diamond League wins. After cruising to a meeting record of 19.83 in Silesia, Tebogo beat US rivals Christian Coleman and Fred Kerley with an impressive 9.87 in the 100m in Rome.
He then returned to his favoured 200m with a stunning 19.55 in Zurich to cement his status as favourite ahead of the final in Brussels.
Despite missing out on the Diamond League title. Tebogo was undoubtedly the standout performer in the men’s 200m in 2024, and fully deserved to take home the Jesse Owens Rising Star Award.
His battle with Bednarek in Brussels also hinted at the promise to come from athletics’ biggest rising star, as he prepares to launch a fresh attack on the Diamond Trophy in 2025.
Source: Wanda Diamond League
