WATCH: Video Of the Week — Wayde van Niekerk’s God-honouring interview

After winning Olympic gold and setting a new world record of 23:03 seconds for the 400m Wayde van Niekerk lost no time in telling the world about the God he worships.

Below you can view his trackside interview with BBC Sport after he broke Michael Johnson’s 1999 record by 15 seconds — see our earlier report.

Not surprisingly, much has been written about the talented 24-year-old South African athlete this week. One of the remarkable facts to emerge is that he was born prematurely at 29 weeks weighing little over 1kg. There were grave doubts that he would survive, let alone become a successful athlete. He spent the first few weeks of his life in an incubator in the neonatal unit at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

He returned there in May with a R500 000 donation to help expand the unit. He said: “From what my mother tells me it was apparently a very difficult and emotional journey to have a premature baby.

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“There were days where she was not sure whether I was going to make it to the next day. That’s how sick I was.”

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