Thando Dlodlo will be all "Striped-up" when he lines up to race the 100 metres for the first time this season as he has joined the TuksAthletics Club.

For South African athletics, it is good news. Every member of the South African 4x100m-relay team that set the new national and Africa record (37.65s) during the 2019 World Championships in Doha are now in the same club. Paul Gorries, the national relay coach, is also at Tuks. 

It is believed that a well-trained South Africa 4x100m relay team can medal at the Tokyo Olympics or a World Championships. 

According to Dlodlo, he and Gorries got talking during the Doha championships. 

"It is what convinced me to join Tuks. Paul will be coaching me." 

The 21-year old Dlodlo is one of the most exciting prospects in South African sprinting. Statistics will show that he is getting faster each year. In 2014, he dipped under 11 seconds for the first time clocking 10.96s over 100 metres. By 2019, he has improved his personal best time to 10.08s. He is one of only 13 local sprinters to have gone faster than 10.10s.

The Tuks sprinter believes he is capable of running faster times, even dipping under ten seconds. It is only a matter of working on a few specifics of his technique to gain those extra hundredths of a second. 

"My best trait as a sprinter at the moment is my start. That is why I ran the first leg of the relay during the Doha World Championships. During the final, I got to race against Christian Coleman. For years I have been following the careers of the world's best sprinters on television. To be running shoulder to shoulder with them is something I will remember for some time to come."

Dlodlo, Simon Magakwe, Clarence Munyai and Akani Simbine set the second-fastest time during the Doha World Champs heats' clocking 37.65s. The South Africans finished fifth in the final running 37.73s. 

Dlodlo is a real student of sprinting. With ease, he can recollect what sprinter raced what time when and why it was or is a significant breakthrough in sprinting. But it is Simbine and Wayde van Niekerk who he considers to be his local heroes. 

"They proved that it is possible to be one of the world’s best training in South Africa." 

Speed is genuinely Dlodlo's passion. To him, it is not only about beating the stopwatch on a synthetic track. The power and speed of motor car engines also get his adrenaline pumping. 

There is nothing he likes more than to get behind a car's steering wheel and get the engine to perform at its maximum and "smoking" the wheels. It is called spinning.

Spinning is considered to be the fastest-growing extreme motorsports in South Africa. BMW M South Africa is an official sponsor for the country's premier car spinning competition - Red Bull Shay iMoto. 

According to Dlodlo, he is far from becoming a champion in the spinning. It is anyway not his priority at the moment. He has got unfinished business on the track. There is still the quest to qualify for the Olympics, medals to be won and records to be broken. But one day he hopes to have his own BMW.