Walaza turns down offers from US to stay with his trusted coach

School pupil Bayanda Walaza plans to stick with his coach and his uniquely strange running style when he goes to the University of Pretoria in 2025, the double under-20 world champion said on his return from Peru on Tuesday.

Walaza, who faces matric prelim exams, starting with geography on Thursday, said he had already turned down a few offers from US universities since his meteoric rise that started with the 4x100m Olympic silver at the Paris Games.

The 18-year-old phenom plans to stick with Thabo “Coach T” Matebedi, who made it happen. “I’m not going to change any coaches because that can cause a lot of difficulties and all of that,” said Walaza, who won the 100m and 200m crowns at the age-group competition in Lima last week.

“So it’s better to deal with the coach that is working for me because he made me get two gold medals. He made me get silver at the Olympics so why must I leave him?”

Walaza, a pupil at Curro Hazeldean in Pretoria, said he also enjoyed the administrative capital, where he plans to study logistics. “I’ve got a lot of offers [from US colleges], like I think three or four varsities, but I told them: ‘Ja, I’ll stay here’.”

The sprinter, who ran the first leg of the 4x100m relay in Paris, has developed a lightning start that proved a factor in Peru, but his habit of flailing his arms and rocking his head in the final stages of the race has raised concern among some purists.

“I’ve heard a lot of comments. So my coach told me, as long as it’s working for me, I might as well just stay doing it because if I change it, who might know? I might look nice running, but I might not be the winner that I am right now with this running style I have, so it’s better to work with what you have. Me and my coach are working on what we have. If my running style is like this, it’s better to make it effective than changing it.”

Walaza admitted that his start only came together in Paris. “We had to work for the whole year to perfect that start, and it went perfect at the right time, because I would say [until then] it was not going the way we wanted it. At Paris, that’s when it started working... I think that was also the reason I won because I was leaving them in the start,” he said.