You get to understand its a young persons world when one of Team SAs biggest hopes for 2024 Paris Paralympics success is a teenager, and his hero is a 22-year-old countryman who has been to two such Games and won three medals.
Puseletso Mabote is only 19, a product of the Jumping Kids system, a nonprofit company that supplies and maintains quality prosthetic equipment for children living with lower-limb amputation or limb-related disability across South Africa and into the continent.
In 2010, five-year-old Mabote underwent an emergency amputation after a truck crashed into the family vehicle on the way to school. The accident claimed his right leg from above the knee. He became a beneficiary of the Jumping Kids Prosthetic Fund in 2013 and was introduced to para-athletics to aid his rehabilitation.
Like so many of his Team SA peers at the 2024 Paralympics, which kicked off on Wednesday night, Mabote is a shining inspiration.
Mabote, who is in matric year at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg, will compete in his second Paralympics, taking part in the mens T63 100m and the long jump.
