I'm lucky to be alive, says long jump star Manyongo

Moments before he took the leap that took his life full circle, Luvo Manyonga looked up to the heavens and remembered.

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Rio de Janeiro - Moments before he took the leap that took his life full circle, Luvo Manyonga looked up to the heavens and remembered. He remembered the sessions together, the struggles and the almost manic obsession of the late Mario Smith, his first coach. He remembered a mate, one who is now lost but is still with him, he explained.

A car accident cut short Smith's life in 2014 but Manyonga remembered, even as his world was being turned on its head, the talent Smith fought to nurture.

“He's still with me. I felt him over me just before the 8.37m jump. I looked up to say thanks and to say that it was time,” Manyonga confessed.

This wasn't a throwaway line said for effect to a packed press room, but one said in private as the sun seared brightly on South Africa's Olympic hero. It was said in Xhosa, in homage and in reflective pride that the labour Smith had poured into him had finally paid off.

“He's with me and when I celebrated, I thanked him, too. This has been a long road,” Manyonga said, his mind briefly flitting to his hometown Mbekweni, to the “demons” he admits almost swallowed him up forever.

“I knew that I had talent, because I had done it in the junior world championships. But it's hard to explain how it happens,” he said of his battle to kick the Tik habit.

“I knew it was wrong but it becomes a way of life. It was stupid and it felt worse because I knew that I had this talent.”

The 25-year-old said that even when he was on the wrong kind of high, he still had hope that someone, anyone, would rescue him.

“Sometimes all we need is a second chance. I needed someone to just believe in me again, someone to remember I wasn't dead yet.”

The goofy grin that he has worn since Saturday night won't wash away any time soon. He's past the point of pinching himself and sleep has been a train he was unable to catch for at least 24 hours. Fate decreed that he got his medal last night in front of the biggest crowd of the athletics week. The kid who had hid away from people in shame was standing in front of the world, chest bursting with pride and covered in Olympic silver. The adrenaline of a dream come true has seen to it that he has been floating from interview to interview, reflection to reflection, as he steps into a whole new world of possibilities.

“I want to break records now,” he stated.

It's as simple and as serious as that and his coach Daniel Cornelius insists it's only a matter of time before the big numbers come. “He just believes in himself so much. 8.37m was not a surprise for me because he can go over 8.50m.”

The self-belief is no surprise when Manyonga's story is assessed, naked of the romance of the last two years, and the delirium of the past two days.

“I'm lucky to be alive; to be here, in Rio ... Rio?! Come on, man. It's a long way.”

It is indeed a long way from 2012 and yet another township talent squandered. Most who go down that torrid path of substance abuse don't make it back and society shuns them, confining them to the human scrap heap. Yet here was Manyonga talking of records and a future for his son, 5, a house for Mama and yet more justification for those who believed in him even when he himself had nearly given up.

Manyonga hopes his story has broken through the mental shackles that hold so many youngsters without direction just as fiercely as they gripped him a few years ago.

“It happens but there are options. I hope I can be an example. No one is perfect but everyone can change. I was dying but I couldn't get out. People who were close to me turned away from me. It was shameful,” he said of his state.

“People must understand that we are all God's people and He has a plan for all of us. You can't judge a person by what you see. God doesn't give up on us.”

The Star