Letsile Tebogo: Ultimate Championships provide emotional return to Budapest

Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo will return to Budapest for the Ultimate Championships next week, but the Hungarian capital is more than just another stop on the athletics calendar for the Botswana sprinter.

It is the city where the 23-year-old announced himself to the world and where his mother Seratiwa watched him make history for his country by claiming two medals at the 2023 World Championships.

This time Seratiwa will not be cheering on her son from the stands, having passed away in May 2024 after a short illness.

Having shared a close relationship with his mother - one she described as being more like a "brother and sister bond" - Tebogo admits that returning without her is difficult.

"I haven't really looked into the fact that I'm going now to Budapest without my mom," he said.

"It's just been a bumpy ride having to think about it and having to continue with the grind."

Three years ago, Seratiwa surprised her son by travelling to Budapest to watch the then 20-year-old compete in his first senior global championships.

Tebogo won silver in the 100m and bronze in the 200m - the first World Championship medals claimed by a male athlete from Botswana. He also became the first African man to win a World Championship medal in the 100m.

Seratiwa told BBC Sport Africa at the time that she was "proud" of what her son had achieved.

For all the memories the city holds, Tebogo says there is also a source of strength in returning to the place where his mother witnessed one of the defining moments of his career.

"I believe she's always there with me in spirit and in days where giving up is an option," he said.

"She pushes me to give my absolute best and I believe the memories that we had in Budapest, they will still come again."

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Those memories now sit alongside everything that has happened since for Tebogo.

A year on from his success at the 2023 World Championships, Tebogo scaled greater heights by becoming Botswana's first Olympic champion when he won the 200m at the Paris 2024 Games, carrying his mother's initials on both his shoes and fingernails as a tribute.

He returns to Budapest as one of the faces of a new competition created to bring together the sport's best performers.

The Ultimate Championships is a biennial global event designed to crown the best of the best in a track and field season.

The three-day end-of-season competition includes Olympic champions, world champions, Diamond League winners and the year's other leading performers.

The inaugural edition in Budapest, which runs from 11-13 September, has a $10m (£7.41m) prize pot - the highest in track and field history according to organisers World Athletics - with each gold medallist taking home $150,000 (£111,000).

Tebogo, who helped Botswana to gold in the 4x400m at the World Relays on home soil earlier this year before registering 200m wins at the Diamond League events in Oslo and Lausanne, says the 200m in Budapest will not only be about looking back.

He is one of the team captains for the Kids' Athletics Ultimate Challenge, where young people from across the city will be invited to participate in activities at the Gyula Zsivotzky National Athletics Centre the day before the Ultimate Championships begin.

That will give him the chance to share some of the lessons he has learned since first stepping onto the global stage.

"I believe firstly you should start with accountability," he said.

"Think about your preparation, how you want your journey or your season to be, and then also think of unwavering sportsmanship.

"I would love them to have that unwavering sportsmanship, so that they can share lanes, they can cheer for one another."