March 16 : Former Olympic long jump silver medallist Luvo Manyonga will end a seven-year international hiatus after being selected in the South African delegation to compete in the World Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland this month.
Manyonga, 35, won a silver medal at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games and is regarded as one of South Africa’s most gifted athletes, but has received two doping bans in his career.
He has admitted to recreational drug addiction and in December 2024 completed a four-year ban for failing to provide anti-doping officials with sufficient information to complete drug testing.
He remains determined to put himself in the frame for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, however, and this year has jumped a best of 8.11 meters, placing him 17th in the world.
“I think I have another Olympics in me because in those four years I was out, it was like a car was parked, not being used,” he told South Africa’s Eyewitness News last year.
Manyonga’s silver medal in Rio was a remarkable tale of triumph over adversity.
Having admitted recreational drug addiction, he underwent rehabilitation and did not compete between 2012 and 2014.
Manyonga was given an 18-month suspension by the sport’s world governing body in that period after testing positive for the recreational drug tik – the local South African variant of crystal methamphetamine.
After claiming Olympic silver in Brazil, he won the gold medal in the 2017 World Championships and took first place at the Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast a year later.
