Born in Chatsworth, growing up in Klaarwater, studied in Cape Town, working in Johannesburg, making his Paralympic debut in Rio de Janeiro, being crowned world champion in both Paris and Kobe, Mpumelelo Mhlongo has become a true citizen of the world.
Fortunately, he’s ours, South African and is one of two flagbearers for the country when the 2024 Paralympics burst into life on Wednesday night.
The 30-year-old is taking part in his third Paralympics and this time he has very real prospects of showing that all that glitters is gold. He has a dazzling CV and having competed in the last Paralympics in Tokyo in the T64 category, where he finished fifth in all of the 100m, 200m and long jump, he’s back in the T44’s where it all started.
For those who are looking for an explanation as to what the T44 classification is, it is this: the para-athlete must have unaffected knee joints allowing for controlled power delivery but they must focus harder to sense and grip the track surface whilst maintaining good running posture and symmetry.
Which brings us to Mhlongo. In introducing himself he told SuperSport TV: “My Instagram handle is phantom toes and the condition is referring to when people have been amputated and they feel a phantom limb.
“I don’t have any toes on my right side but I am continuously told that the right way to run and the right way to do my long jump is to stay on my toes. So it’s an inner joke in my training group that the man with no toes needs to stay on his toes so that he can perform at a world-class level. I think I’m doing ok for myself up until this point?” That final reference is rhetorical.
Having won gold in the 2024 World Para Athletics Championships in Kobe, Japan, the South African Sportsman of the Year with a disability goes into the Paralympics not only with gold on his mind but a world record time as well. The time to beat is 11.00sec, which happens to be his own world record and something he refers to as “a personal best”.
South Africans will gladly take a gold medal but Mhlongo is looking to produce an exclamation mark performance in Paris.
“I really believe that if you stop worrying about the time outcome of your race and you break it down into three parts and you execute those, you’ll have a year where you will break the world record, if not five times, 10 times, you finish the line, and you look at the clock and you go, that’s the world record. That’s something I might never catch again. And then you have to work towards beating your own personal best, which just so happens to be the world record in your class,” he said.
“Hopefully I can pull out a really good performance that will go into the history books. I think the big goal for Paris is to execute, execute like we’ve never before. How far can we beat our potential, wherever that might be, so definitely a world-record performance and definitely a gold medal.
“But hopefully our sights are aimed much higher (and much further in the long jump) so that we stay in the history books for as long as possible. We can then say South Africa has held a record for 20, 30 years. Something to give some other people a chance to chase down South Africa on the global stage.”
It all starts when he joins para-swimmer Kat Swanepoel in parading at the opening ceremony with the country’s flag. They have been constantly smiling since they arrived in Paris and those smiles are only going to get broader as the clock ticks down. Will that clock next to the track be stopped somewhere between 10.80 and 10.99sec? Having done much of his training in Europe under the expert eye of coach Jason Sewanyana, the signs are pointing that way.
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