Akani Simbine on balancing his business endeavours with his active athletics career

As he approaches his 30th birthday on September 21, the holder of the national 100m record at an impressive 9.84 seconds realizes that his days on the track are numbered, especially with younger sprinters emerging.

However, Simbine is ensuring that he has a solid plan for the future by founding and leading Backtrack Sports, a company specializing in athletics service.

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"I am a CEO and partner of Backtrack and we are a company that produces or does broadcasting for school sports and a whole lot of sporting activities. The whole thing behind our company is for athletes by athletes,” Simbine said.

“We employ athletes that are struggling to find jobs and struggling to go to school and we train them on camera, we train them on production, we train them on broadcasting just so that they have a skill they can take to the market because not everyone can afford to go to school.

“Not everyone can find a job and we are looking to employ young kids that are in sport to do this thing. So, for us, it's literally about that and just growing the sporting culture and taking the sporting culture to the world."

Simbine’s remarkable journey in athletics has seen him excel in prestigious competitions such as the Olympic Games, African Championships, Commonwealth Games, and World Championships, even clinching Diamond League honours.

However, amidst his global success, he remains deeply rooted in his origins, with a primary focus on supporting young athletes in schools.

"School sports teaches you a lot. There's a lot of character traits that you can learn from school let's start there, it teaches you a whole lot of things that you can take to corporate, you can take to work, to university, to life and when you look at sports, it comes with the discipline of, you need to follow a coaching program.

“You need to follow a dieting programme and it's so many things that you need to follow and those are the skills that you learn going in the journey of school sports."