Mpumelelo Mhlongo eyes leap to Paralympic gold as Team SA seek medals

Born and raised in Chatsworth outside Durban, a student in Cape Town, Paralympic debutant in Rio de Janeiro, and world champion in both Paris and Kobe, Mpumelelo Mhlongo has become a true citizen of the world. 

Fortunately, he is South African, and one of the country’s Paris Paralympics gold medal prospects will be one of Team SA’s two flagbearers when the 2024 Games burst into life on Wednesday night. 

The 30-year-old is taking part in his third Paralympics and this time he has real prospects of a win. He has a dazzling CV and having competed in the last Paralympics in Tokyo in the T64 category, where he finished fifth in all of the 100m, 200m and long jump, he’s back in the T44s where it all started. 

In the T44 classification the para-athlete must have unaffected knee joints allowing for controlled power delivery, but they must focus harder to sense and grip the track surface while maintaining good running posture and symmetry. 

Which brings us to the 30-year-old. In introducing himself he told SuperSport TV: “My Instagram handle is phantom toes, and the condition is referring to when people have been amputated and they feel a phantom limb. 

“I don’t have any toes on my right side, but I am continuously told that the right way to run and the right way to do my long jump is to stay on my toes. So it’s an inner joke in my training group that the man with no toes needs to stay on his toes so he can perform at a world-class level. I think I’m doing OK for myself up until this point?” 

That final reference was rhetorical.

Having won gold in the 2024 World Para-Athletics Championships in Kobe, Japan, the South African sportsman of the year with a disability goes into the Paralympics not only with gold on his mind, but a world record time too. It’s an ambitious target, a 10.81sec timing that Great British star Jamie Peacock set at the 2016 Paralympics.

South Africans will gladly take a gold medal, but Mhlongo is looking to produce an exclamation mark performance in Paris. 

“Hopefully I can pull out a really good performance that will go into the history books. I think the big goal for Paris is to execute; execute like we’ve never done before. How far can we beat our potential, wherever that might be; so definitely a world-record performance and definitely a gold medal.

“But hopefully our sights are aimed much higher [and much further in the long jump] so we stay in the history books for as long as possible. We can then say SA has held a record for 20, 30 years. Something to give some other people a chance to chase down SA on the global stage.” 

It all starts when Mhlongo joins para-swimmer Kat Swanepoel in parading at the opening ceremony with the country’s flag.

Team SA arrived and settled in the athletes village on Saturday. 

There are a record number of countries competing (168) in these Paralympics, a record number of para-athletes (4,400), record number of female athletes (1,983) and a record number of events for females (235). 

Team SA chef de mission Patience Shikwambana said the figures show the necessary growth that women have made in the Paralympic movement.

“If you consider that at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics there were 988 female athletes and that number has doubled to what it is in 2024 it highlights the way the Games have moved forward,” she said. 

At the last Paralympics in Tokyo, Team SA achieved seven medals, four of which were gold. Two of those gold medals came from Ntando Mahlangu who is not in Paris this time around, while a third gold medallist from Japan, Anrune Weyers, has retired. However, the fourth, Pieter du Preez, is back in the hand-cycling event. 

The most experienced members of Team SA are also female. Equestrian’s Philippa Johnson-Dwyer and wheelchair tennis star Kgothatso “KG” Montjane are attending their sixth and fifth Games respectively. Team SA media/Sascoc