EXCLUSIVE | Akani Simbine has magic bullet but planning for World Athletics Championships will be key, says coach

South African sprint sensation Akani Simbine has set himself up as the early man to beat at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo later this year, after powering TeamSA to gold at the Athletics World Relays in Guangzhou, China, in the 4X100m relay at the weekend.

The 31-year-old sprinter is enjoying a purple patch at a time when most sprinters are ready to hang up their spikes. The jet-heeled runner has rapidly shed his tag as the ‘nearly man’ of global athletics.

In an exclusive interview with Independent media on Monday, Simbine’s coach, Werner Prinsloo, was asked what the sprinter is doing differently this season.

“I think it’s a combination of things; an accumulation of things over the past few years. Mentally he is in a good space, he has this calm in his life and he understands why he’s running,” Prinsloo said.

“In terms of the training, in 2024 we had a very good year, running three 9.8s. It has been just basically a continuation from then on.

“We did identify a couple of things that we needed to work on. That’s why we did the indoor season – the 60s – to try and work on those specific things. And it’s paid dividends thus far.”

Simbine's time of 9.90s at the Botswana Golden GP in April is still the world lead for 2025. In fact, Simbine has consistently dipped under 10 seconds in the 100m, cementing his status as the ‘Sub-10 King’.

The speedster claimed back-to-back 100m victories in the 2025 Diamond League season, beating Olympic silver medallist Kishane Thompson in Keqiao on May 3. He also claimed the top step of the podium at the previous Diamond League meeting in Xiamen, also in China.

That ability to turn on the afterburners late in the race was again evident at the World Athletics Relays at the weekend. This time he reeled in Brandon Hicklin of the US as he anchored the 4x100m team, which included Bayanda Walaza, Sinesipho Dambile and Bradley Nkoana.

“It was always his strong point,” Prinsloo said.

“It was always there and I think it just took the right kind of training and just time for it to come out. I think early last year, when we went into the first Diamond Leagues, we had this discussion about you know you’ve got a good top-end speed.

"He’s proven it over the years, but we need to now exploit that. And it’s just the way of running through the different phases of the 100m just to help him bring it out. And that has been the magic bullet for us since last year.”

TeamSA, meanwhile, stopped the clock in the one-lap final at 37.61 seconds on Sunday, another world lead for 2025, Simbine's final 100m the highlight.

Despite his blistering start to the year, the SA record-holder has been keen to downplay talk that he is the favourite for the world champs in Tokyo in September. And his coach has also issued a note of caution.

“Right now we are in a good space and we knew after the indoor season he was going to find some good times,” Prinsloo said.

"The first one was the Botswana one, we weren’t quite sure where he was and running that 9.90 in Botswana sort of gave us a good indication that we are heading in the right direction

“Having said that, this is a particularly long season, with the world champs only being in September, which is sort of out of the ordinary. But we have to pace ourselves now through the season, because it is very early still.

"We haven’t even seen some of the top American guys do things, so we have to be very cautious not to read too much into this ... From now, it’s just a matter of planning properly and managing the whole process,” Prinsloo concluded.