Luvo Manyonga

Luvo Manyonga (born 8 January 1991) is a South African track and field athlete who specialises in the long jump. He won the 2017 World Championship in London and the 2018 Commonwealth Games title in the Gold Coast, Australia. He was the Olympic silver medallist in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Quotes I loved the long jump from my very first competition. I was a 100m and 200m sprinter at school when I decided to enter the long jump for the first time. I instantly loved that feeling of flying through the air and landing on a soft surface. I also loved the fan support, the slow handclap - a whole combination of factors. That day I won the competition with 7.25m and Mario Smith (who later became Manyonga’s coach) came up to me afterwards and asked, “Who coaches me and how long I’d been doing the long jump?” When I said it was first competition he was amazed and that was the first moment I knew I had an exciting future in long jump. Even before that first long jump competition at the age of 18, I knew I could jump. As a child, I played a game called Three Sticks in which you placed sticks on the ground and tried to jump into the spaces between the sticks without touching them or jumped in the same space twice. I guess it was similar to triple jump. No-one could beat me at that game.My passion for long jump grew over time. I always like to share and embrace my love of the long jump. If I’m in my township, I just want to jump. It is an amazing feeling. When I jump, it makes me feel like a super hero. If I jump 8.30m in the first-round leap I feel transformed. I don’t want to stop jumping until I have jumped out of the pit. I am never satisfied with the distance when I jump. I always want to jump further and expect more. I never put on limit in how far I can jump. If I can’t jump for any period of time I feel locked out. A little like when your parents tell you that you are not allowed any sweets! You want them but you can’t do anything about it. It is tough. The long jump has given me so much in my life. It makes me smile even when life is difficult. No matter what difficulties and challenges I have faced in my life, long jump has kept me going. Luvo Manyonga: I love jumping because..., September 23 2018 It has been way too long since anybody has come close to jumping nine metres. It is something I want to rectify. I know that I am capable of jumping much further, but I don’t want to set a date to when I am going to do so. All I’m prepared to say, is that no record should last for ever. I fully realise that this record is going to be improved at some stage by a young talented athlete. And I will be happy for whoever does so because that is how it works in athletics. Luvo leaps to new national long jump record, March 18 2017 I felt like there was nothing left for me. After my mum passed on, that’s when I decided my life was over. She was the pillar of my life. She kept me going. The wagon lost its wheels and everything started going south. My life was crazy,I was just living for another fix. I got to the point where I was robbing people, snatching phones, breaking into houses, just to get a fix. That’s how low I went. I just had to wake up in the morning and numb the pain because I didn’t want to accept that I had a problem. I couldn’t walk for a week, That’s when the penny dropped for me. I saw my life flash in front of me when those guys were beating me. The only thing left for me was death, because that’s the life of a drug addict. So I decided then that either I would kill myself or go on with my life. I needed to find Luvo Manyonga. It brought all the memories back of where I’d come from, through the journey that I went through,To be able to stand on that runway, healthy and look forward to being able to do what Luvo does best, it was quite emotional, man I am human. I make mistakes, I don’t sugarcoat that. I was the one who was not there for my [anti-doping] whereabouts. I never used any substance to cheat sport, it was just a recreational drug that I used. I had a problem. But now I have learned my lesson. I have recognised who Luvo Manyonga is. I came from a small township and nobody had experienced fame or been around the world at a young age, A lot of things happened for me very quick. I got big-headed and thought I owned the world. My drug use was something that was pending to explode. Sport can give you a natural high so, when I wasn’t in sport, I would look for something that would give me that, Whenever I came back to South Africa, I wanted that feeling. I thought that I could manage it. I thought I could balance competing in the season and then, in the off-season, do my drugs. But nobody can cheat drugs. Those things are evil. You will get to a point where they take over, they rule your life, you depend on them. Me trying to take another [drug] hit right now is death for me. I’m so excited,I know for a fact that I still have big jumps and gold medals in my body. I still have to give these youngsters a game. I feel like I’m getting better and better with each competition. Muscle memory you never forget. Last year was a start up. I’m like a car that was parked for four years. I just need to drive it for a while. The engine is still fresh, the tyres and oil have been changed. The V12 is going to be showing some flames soon. ‘The only thing left for me was death’: meet the meth-addict long jumper who has been to hell and back, March 19 2026 External links Category:1991 births Category:Track and field athletes Category:Living people Category:Sportspeople from South Africa