Bradley Nkoana did not choose athletics. In a sense, athletics chose him. Growing up in Mabopane, Pretoria, the young boy wanted nothing more than a pair of football boots. He dreamed of playing soccer, of chasing a ball rather than a finish line, but his grandmother, Anna, had other plans.
She gave the boots to his younger brother Thabang instead and bought Bradley a pair of spikes. He was not pleased. ‘I do not want the spikes,’ he told her. Yet she saw something in him that he could not yet see in himself.
Today, that reluctant purchase has become an Olympic silver medal. At twenty years old, Nkoana ran the crucial third leg for South Africa’s 4×100 metres relay team at the Paris 2024 Olympics, helping to secure second place. The team’s time of 37.57 seconds set a new African record, pending official ratification.
Now a student of Coaching Science at North-West University, Nkoana speaks with a maturity that belies his years. He has sought therapy to process the grief he never fully expressed as a child after losing his mother to breast cancer at eleven years of age, and he carries the weight of a promise made to her: to take care of his younger brother. That promise, he says, is what keeps him standing when he feels like crumbling.
On the track, he has developed a near-telepathic understanding with veteran sprinter Akani Simbine, whom he describes as a big brother. Together, they have turned South Africa’s relay team into a global force, yet Nkoana is hungry for more.
Having grown tired of being the man on the side, the one who gets the job done without the headlines, he has declared an end to ‘Mr Nice Guy’. His individual best of 10.03 seconds in the 100 metres suggests he has the speed to match his ambition.
Underrated or not, Bradley Nkoana gets the job done. And he is only just getting started.
