Akani Simbine

Akani Simbine Career

Akani Simbine has been one of the world’s top short sprinters in recent years. He has finished in the top five in the 100-meter at the Olympic Games in the past three Olympic Games.

Simbine has competed at a high level internationally since 2013, when he ran at the World Championships for the first time. The 21-year-old sprinter didn’t make it out of the heats with a time of 10.38 seconds, but it would be the start of a long international career.

In 2014, he lowered his personal best to 10.21 seconds, a time that he achieved in a negative wind during the semi-finals of the Commonwealth Games held in Glasgow, United Kingdom. The next year, he dropped under the 10-second barrier for the first time when he ran 9.99 seconds in Slovenia.

Simbine would go on to represent South Africa in the 100 at the World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea. He won the competition with a new personal best that tied the South African record at 9.97 seconds.

At the World Championships in Nanjing, China, he finished fourth in his semi-final heat, narrowly missing the final.

Akani Simbine Breakout

Simbine broke the South African 100 record outright in 2016 when he ran 9.89 seconds at the Gyulai István Memorial in Hungary in June. He showed consistency later in the summer when he made his first Summer Olympic final in Rio de Janeiro, finishing fifth with a time of 9.94 seconds.

Simbine continued to rise in the rankings the next three years. He won his first Diamond League event in Doha in 2017, and in 2018, he displaced pre-race favorite Yohan Blake in the final at the Commonwealth Games and took home the victory.

The next year, he finished fourth at the 2019 World Championships in the 100 with a time of 9.93 seconds. He would also win the Müller Anniversary Games Diamond League event in the same year.

Post-Covid Pandemic

Simbine ran a world-leading time of 9.91 seconds in his season opener in the 100. Unfortunately, the pandemic would prove disruptive to his training. In a March interview, he said:

“This Covid year was stupid-crazy for me. We stopped training on track in March, and I only got back on track in Europe. So, I always hoped to get into races. We had to leave South Africa on an evacuation flight in mid-August.

“When I go back home now, I will not be going on holiday because I will have to quarantine for two weeks. And after that, I will start to train again.”

With the Olympics postponed a year, Simbine turned his attention to 2021. He ran a time of 9.82 seconds at the South African Championships in April. It would have been a new personal best, but the wind was slightly over the allowable limit at 2.8m/s.

Two weeks later, he anchored the South African team’s victory in the 4 x 100-meter relay at World Relays.

Before the Olympics, he ran a new personal best and National Record of 9.84 seconds.

He finished just off the podium at the Olympics, finishing fourth with a time of 9.93 seconds. Italy’s Lamont Marcell would take home the win with a time of 9.80 seconds.

Akani Simbine 2022 to Present

Finishing just off the podium would be a continued trend for Simbine over the next few years. He finished fifth at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, United States, and fourth again at the Paris Olympics in 2024, where he set a national record of 9.82 seconds.

He finally achieved his first Olympic medal with the 4 x 100-meter relay team in Paris, capturing silver only behind Canada.

At the start of the 2025 season, Simbine won the bronze medal in the 60-meter at the World Indoor Championships, running 6.53 seconds.  He finished behind Lachlan Kennedy and the winner, Jeremiah Azu.

In April 2025, he became the first athlete to run under 10 seconds for 11 consecutive years, breaking the previous record of ten held by Usain Bolt. He would also win the first Diamond League Meeting of the year in Xiamen, China.

He went on to make yet another World Championship final in September, running 10.04 seconds in Tokyo and finishing seventh.

Personal Life

Simbine is married to Terisa Webb, who he attributes as a big supporter and who is often seen cheering for him from the stands. The couple has a young son together.

Simbine has a tattoo on his left calf of a man in mid-sprint who closely resembles Simbine. He told his tattoo artist that he wanted to get a tattoo of a running man. The artist replied by saying, “You’re a running man, why don’t you just get yourself?”

FAQS

How fast is Akani Simbine?

Akani Simbine has been one of the fastest men alive for more than a decade. He has a personal best of 6.53 seconds in the 60, 9.82 seconds in the 100, and 19.95 seconds in the 200.

Hold old is Akani Simbine?

Akani Simbine is currently 31, born in September 1993.

Where is Akani Simbine from?

Simbine is from Kempton Park, South Africa.