SPORT: Long jumper’s life improves in leaps and bounds
Long jumper overcomes demons to win silver medal
LUVO Manyonga delivered yet another South African tale of inspiration as he soared to Olympic silver in the long jump in Rio on Saturday night. Cancer survivor Lawrence Brittain claimed a rowing silver last week, and now Manyonga has shown there can be glory after addiction.
Manyonga had seemed destined for greatness after winning the U20 world title in 2010 and finishing fifth at the 2011 senior world championships, a better result than even Khotso Mokoena, SA’s 2008 longjump Olympic silver medallist.
But the kid from Mbekweni township, outside Paarl, had a taste for partying.
Former teammates remember how the talented Manyonga would go awol the night before competitions and then return just in time the next morning and still win.
He developed a taste for tik along the way and his life spiralled into a vicious cycle of drug abuse as a result of which he lost four years of competition.
The father of one tested positive for crystal meth in early 2012 and was banned for 18 months.
That is when the nightmare really started, with Manyonga eventually running the streets between drug dens, not knowing if he would survive to see another sunrise.
When Ryk Neethling, the former swimming star turned businessman, saw him some two years ago, he thought Manyonga looked on the brink of death. He tried to help.
So too did SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee president Gideon Sam.
He took Manyonga from his surroundings and relocated him to Pretoria.
The jumper’s comeback was crafted under the guidance of the Tuks High Performance Centre.
Working with young coach Neil Cornelius, Manyonga returned to competition in early March for the first time in four years.
“I’ve risen from my demons,” a beaming Manyonga, 25, who has spent even the early parts of this year in a halfway house as part of the rehabilitation process, said.
“They’ve been trying for years to pull me down, but now I made it, hey,” he said after his success.
Silver was a fantastic result but it was almost gold.
Manyonga’s 8.37m personal best on his fifth attempt seemed good enough to take first place.
But American Jeff Henderson downgraded that as he sailed one centimetre further to steal the victory on his final jump.
Britain’s Greg Rutherford, who has dominated the event since the London Olympics, had to settle for bronze on 8.29m.
Cornelius, at 28 just three years older than Manyonga, described his charge’s rise from despair and poverty as a Cinderella story.
“He has turned himself into something he can be proud of, something Mario Smith can be proud of.”
Smith, Manyonga’s original coach, was killed in a car crash in 2014, and he was one of the people the jumper thanked afterwards, along with Sam and the HPC.
“Mario Smith . . . he’s the one who made me this person today,” Manyonga said.
“I’d like to thank him, wherever he is,” Manyonga said, adding that he was eager to call his mother Joyce and five-year-old son Lindokuhle.
Cornelius wants Manyonga to help others and get involved in talent identification.
“He can be the inspiration to change their lives.”
No sportsman can get much higher than winning an Olympic silver medal, and Manyonga was in seventh heaven.
How did he feel? “I can’t even describe it. Just look at my face, bra, you can see it.”