Can Tebogo break Usain Bolt’s 15-year-old 200m world record in Brussels?

Letsile Tebogo dug very deep to preserve his unbeaten post Paris Olympics streak and all eyes will be on the Botswana sprinter to see if he will be the man to do what Yohan Blake and Noah Lyles have failed to do-break Usan Bolt’s 19.19 200m world record set in 2009 at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

Blake ran 19.26 in 2011 and that was the closest any athlete has gotten to what is proving to be a magical time.

Lyles ran 19.31 in July 2022 but only succeeded in breaking Michael Johnson’s 19.32 American record which used to be the world record until Bolt bolted into reckoning.

Tebogo has not run inside 12.4 and has only broken 12.50 once, the 19.46 he ran to win the historic 200m gold in Paris but the 21 year old fels he is ready, that he’s only waiting for the perfect moment.

‘I’m not putting a date on breaking the world record. It will happen when the time is right, and I am ready. May be when the weather is perfect in Brussels, it will happen,’ Tebogo said at the press conference heralding the Athletissima in Lausanne last month.

The former, two-time world U20 100m champion has hinted of that possibility in Brussels with his comment in Laussane and his post race comment after beating Kenneth Bednarek on the line in at the Weltklasse in Zurich on Thursday night.

‘What was different [between this race and the Olympics] was the curve. Today, I did not run the curve, I only ran the home straight – but with the Olympic final I ran throughout the whole race.

‘That is something I will do at the Diamond League final because there is still more inside me. I mean, it is all about taking risks. Without risks there is no rewards, so I am taking all the risks that I have got,’ he said after the race in Zurich.

Tebogo’s last 100m at the Weltklasse was timed at 9.25 seconds split which is insanely fast, faster than Bolt’s best ever final 100m split in the 200m.

Can that risk of running all out lead him to breaking Bolt’s 200m world record?

Expectations high. Will an African man fulfil it for the whole world?