Amantle Montsho Wants to Play Basketball after Rio

Daegu World Championships 400m gold medalist and reigning Commonwealth Games 400m champion Amantle Montsho revealed this week that she intends stop running after the 2016 Rio Olympics to become a basketball player.

Now training in Senegal and looking forward to defending her Commonwealth quarter-mile title in Glasgow, Scotland this summer, Montsho told the BBC: “If I retire in two years after Rio 2016, I’m going to basketball as that is my favorite sport. I even like it more than athletics. I can’t lie.”

However, between now and 2016, she will focus on running and winning her second Commonwealth gold. She is committed to keeping her Commonwealth record of 50.10secs, which she set in Delhi in 2010.

At the 2013 Moscow World Championships, Montsho led down the homestretch but saw victory snatched from her at the line by British star Christine Ohuruogu, who dipped aggressively at the tape, while Montsho remained upright and lost by a mere four thousandths of a second, both timed at 49.41. Montsho later said she didn’t know how to dip at the end of a race.

The 30-year-old Botswanan, who plays basketball sometimes during the off-season, vowed recently that there will not be a repeat of that Moscow scenario because she has learnt something from Ohuruogu.