Rough diamond Adams misses out on a spot in 200m final

● The Mediterranean sparkled enticingly in the morning sun outside the plush R6 200-anight hotel that was home to Luxolo Adams in Monaco the past few days, but the glitz didn’t fool the unheralded sprinter.

Adams, who turns 22 next week, flew out of South Africa in late May for his first taste of racing abroad, and he’s quickly learned that travelling is anything but glamorous.

“Some people think that being an athlete is awesome; you go see places, you go see people, but travelling is a killer,” said Adams, who grew up in the north-eastern Cape town of Burgersdorp before scholarships took him to Port Elizabeth for school and university.

The bright lights of European athletics have blinded him at times.

In his second outing, in Hengelo in Holland, he couldn’t find the warm-up track and got through only 20% of his pre-race routine. But he still won.

His nerves had to cope with large crowds that topped anything he’d seen at home, even being surprised by autograph hunters asking for his John Hancock. “In South Africa they know ‘this is Luxolo’, and they just pass me,” laughed Adams.

Armed with a 20.01sec personal best from March, Adams is only sixth on the South African 200m pecking order, where the top four have been sub-20.

Wayde van Niekerk and national record-holder Clarence Munyai are injured; Anaso Jobodwana is still trying to recapture his form from 2015; Akani Simbine is focusing exclusively on the 100m; and US-based Ncincilili Titi, despite a 20.00 best, isn’t on the same stage. Adams has spearheaded South Africa’s 200m challenge this year; in seven races in Europe he made the podium five times.

He took silver at the World Cup in London last weekend, but his seventh place in Monaco on Friday night denied him entry into the Diamond League final by one spot.

Not bad for an athlete being coached from afar on WhatsApp by his regular mentor, Gerrie Posthumus.

He also received some advice from his old coach in Burgersdorp, Jan-Harm van Wyk, the former Cheetahs wing who e-mailed a video clip of one race asking why his arms were “all over the place”. And there are the unavoidable snags, like delayed flights and spending nights in airports.

“You have to sleep on top of your bags and when you wake up your body’s feeling so sore. Your back,” the sports management student said.

But having South Africans around him at meets, like Caster Semenya and Carina Horn in Monaco, is a major boost. “I feel okay, I’m more relaxed now . . . I know where to go and cry,” he added with a laugh.

And he knows to avoid the trap of becoming a tourist. “This is the best place I’ve been to in my entire life,” Adams said of Monaco.

“I want to go out and take pictures but I can’t because I want to become a professional athlete. I need to put my work first.”

He and Horn recently spoke about the need to rest. “She told me at one competition some athletes wanted to go shopping. Hours later they came back and they were tired. That’s not what we came for.”

Horn dislikes the travelling as much as Adams. Racing in Lucerne two weeks ago, she arrived at her hotel to find someone in her bed. “It’s normal to share a room, but to share a bed? No way!” said Horn, who organised a change of rooms.

Adams, who has been based in Nijmegen in the Netherlands for the past two months, is heading home to pay some attention to his books, but it’s only a temporary respite as he heads off to the African championships in Nigeria from August 1-5.

That’s the frenetic life of a top athlete.