New sprint star Lythe Pillay down to earth and on track
Two days after storming onto the world stage, new South African 400m champion Lythe Pillay remained his usual down-toearth self, staying behind to assist a struggling athlete at training.
Pillay’s lightning 44.31sec last weekend rocketed him to third spot on the world list for 2024 and 68th-fastest of all time.
Yet the 21-year-old from Benoni, part of the men’s and mixed 4x400m teams which will attempt to win Olympic spots at World Relays in Bahamas next weekend, is staying humble.
His long-time coach Lindi du Plessis this week recounted how one of her lower-tier athletes in her training group was battling to perform a stepping drill.
“Everyone [else] walks away, going to get some water. What does Lythe do? He shows him step by step,” said Du Plessis, whose husband Corné won world championship relay gold in 2001.
She spotted Pillay’s talent the moment he joined her group as a 14-year-old. “I had to phone my husband. I said, ‘Listen, here’s something.’ The way he ran ... the posture, the way he’s carrying himself on the track, his acceleration, you could see there’s something special.”
Determined to improve as junior school kid, Pillay ran around his complex, eventually winning the 200m hurdles silver as an under-13. He took up the 400m at the King Edward VII high school and soon afterwards linked up with Du Plessis.
Single-parent mom Beverly ferried him to training before his uncle Mervyn Edwards picked up lifting duties. “He was a father figure to all of us,” Pillay said, describing his own dad as a “full-time absent father”.
The second-year BCom student at the University of Johannesburg switched over from a BSc in physiology and biochemistry because the practicals made it impossible to study remotely while travelling.
His initial plan had been to get into medicine “prior to understanding how far I could go with athletics”.
His rise has been meteoric, but consistent, winning the under-20 world title in Colombia 2022 while slicing healthy chunks off his personal best each year.
The comparisons to Wayde van Niekerk, owner of the 43.03 world record, are inevitable, though also overstated, considering Pillay has a different style of racing.
“The one thing I strive to do, which I take the most from Wayde, is that he created his own name ... He was a pioneer in building his own identity. And that’s what I want to take from him.”
But there is one striking similarity between the two athletes, which Van Niekerk highlighted during a lengthy conversation with Pillay and Du Plessis in Italy in 2023 the bond between sprinter and coach.
The way Van Niekerk described his relationship with his former mentor, Ans Botha, struck a familiar chord. “He attributed that to him being the success he is, having been with tannie Ans for such a long period of time,” said Pillay. “She could read his body language in an instant. And coach can do the same with me as well.
“Sometimes when I feel like I am tired, she’ll say before I even mention it: ‘Lythe, cool, we’ll just taper the session a bit.’
“Or if I say I’m tired, she’ll say: ‘But no, your body is saying otherwise. You will do today’s session,’” he said with a laugh.
Du Plessis doesn’t want to over-race Pillay before the Paris Games. “Minimise the races [in the build-up to the games] because when you run a 44.3, it’s a new bracket and there’s a risk of injury.”
Pillay, who joined his relay teammates for a camp in Potchefstroom this weekend, said he had already come down to earth, thanks to the accounting exam he wrote online the morning after his run.
“It was tougher than the race ... It was a nice warm slice of humble pie while the lactic was still warm in the legs.”