Rise From the Ashes

From the jaws of addiction to a silver medal in the Olympics – Luvo Manyonga is a man resurrected

- Kieran Legg

HIS FEET HIT THE SAND, HIS BODY sending up a spray of granules. Luvo Manyonga’s heart was beating hard as he watched the jumper gather himself up in the pit, dusting sand from his red, white and blue kit. The world was spinning in slow motion as a stadium of eyes turned to the scoreboard. A centimetre. A single heartbeat that was enough to put the US’s Jeff Henderson in the lead.

Luvo’s heart sank as the gold medal was torn from his grasp. But in that same breath he saw himself just a year earlier: an addict without hope, a “dead man” who would plead, grovel, steal, do anything to get his fix. And the anxiety fizzled away, leaving behind an almost foreign feeling: contentment.

“I sat there and I thought: I came back from that, I turned it around. And here I’m standing winning a silver medal at the Olympics?” he laughs. The weight of that medal against his chest, those tangible grams – that was proof he had come back from the dead.

The Gift

Luvo was always a natural athlete. Ask his family, ask his friends: “this kid could run”. Growing up in Mbekweni, a small township straddling the outskirts of Paarl, he put bare feet to dusty road whenever he got the chance.

“It was always about winning for me; to show that I was faster,” he says.

But his father, an avid rugby player, wanted to push the young Luvo into the sport. His pace made him a lightning-quick winger, but his performances were begrudging. Unsurprisingly he drifted back towards the track. His father’s opinion manifested as an empty seat during his weekly meets.

A gifted athlete, Luvo hit his stride in Middle School when he qualified for a long jump event in Stellenbosch. For the runner, the switch was inevitable. He thrived on those do-or-die moments.