Amantle Montsho Biography: Age, Family, Education, Career, Controversy, Networth

Amantle Montsho is a Motswana female track and field athlete, she specializes in the 400 metre sprint. She represented Botswana at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympic Games and reached the final toward the end. Amantle Montsho is the former World Champion over the 400m race. She won with her personal best time of 49.56 in Daegu. She has competed in not only the World Championships in Athletics, but also in the IAAF World Indoor Championships.

She has won 8 gold medals and 3 silver medals during the course of her career thus far.

Her personal best times are 100 metres: 11.60s; 200 metres: 22.89s; 400 metres: 49.33s (Monaco, 2013).

Amantles Montsho has pioneered athletics for the women of Botswana.

Let’s explore the vigorous life of Amantle Montsho:

Amantle Montsho Age, Family, 

Amantle Montsho is a 36 year old track athlete born on the 4th July 1983 in Ngamiland, Maun, Botswana. She is the only child of Victor Nkape and Janet Montsho. The couple separated 2 years after Amantle was born. She saw her mother regularly, but spent most of her time with her father. She had 7 half-siblings and step-siblings on her fathers side and 3 half-sisters on her mother’s side.

Amantle grew up running around the unbridled landscape of Maun, a small village in Northern Botswana. 

One of Amantle’s stepsisters, Kabelo Monnawalebala, said, “We’d play all day and race each other back and forth to school. I used to tell her she ran like a grown-up. We were happy.”

Unlike her siblings, she would run short distances, back and forth, repeatedly. This is what her father, Victor Nkape, observed about his 12 year old daughter, but even more astonishing to him was the strength and instensity in which she ran. 

“Your girl runs like a boy,” Nkape’s grandfather commented.

“I didn’t take it seriously at the time,” Nkape said.

Most girls in Maun did not have access to track programs, or even tracks quite honestly, and with a population of 50 000, one gynasium was all the village had to offer its people. Nkape had no idea what route to take regarding the athleticism he had seen in Amantle. So he simply made the uncoventional choice at the time.

“I just let her run,” he said.

Amantle Montsho Education

She attended Bonatla Primary School in Maun and began running there at this age. This is where she showed her love of being an athlete. 

Amantle Montsho then became one of the fastest women in the world and is the reigning World Champion for the 400 metres sprint.

Amantle Montsho Career

Amantle Montsho competed the 2004 Olympic Games, 2006 Commonwealth Games and the World Championships in 2005 and 2007, however she did not make it to the finals in any of those competitions.

In the 2006 African Championships she won a silver medal and a gold medal in the 2007 All-Africa Games, also finishing 5th place in the 200m. She then went on to finish 6th with the African 4x400 metres relay team at the 2006 IAAF World Cup. At the 2008 African Championships in Athletics she ran a personal best and Botswana record time of 48.83 seconds which resulted in her win. It remains the Championship record for the event to date.

Montsho ran at the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships but did not reach the final. However, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Montsho reached her first final. In the 2009 World Championships in Athletics she made it to the final round of the 400 metres and made a time of 49.89s in the semifinals of the competition. In the 2009 IAAF World Athletics, she ended the year with a 5th place finish.

In 2010 Amantle Montsho earned a series of major titles at the 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships. She set records in the heats and semi-finals, but was beaten to bronze by Vania Stambolova. She was the third fastest ever in her 400 metre run, winning the Gabriel Tiacoh meet with a time of 50.35 seconds. She then defended her continental title and won the 400 metres at the 2010 African Championships in Athletics and earned the season’s best run with a time of 50.03 seconds.

She won the Bislett Games on the 2010 Diamond League circuit and ran the fastest time of the year at the 2010 Continental Cup representing Africa. She then continues on to the 2010 Commonwealth Games winning the first ever gold medal at the games for Botswana.

In the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, she became Botswana’s first World Olympic track and field Champion and placed 4th in the 2012 Olympics Final.

Amantle Montsho Controversy

Amantle Montsho was put on a 2 year ban after testing positive for a stimulant methylhexaneamine at the Commonealth Games in 2015.

Botswana Athletics Association President, Moses Bantsi said that Montho’s ban was decide upon by a disciplinary committee. Bantsi told ‘The Associated Press’ that the decision was sent to the IAAF before it was made public. Amantle Montsho had said that she would appeal.

Montsho failed a doping test after a 400 meter final at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland.

She was the first Botswana athlete to win gold at the world championships and the first Commonwealth champion and also the first woman to compete for Botswana at the Olympics when she ran in Athens.

While in Glasgow, tests were done on Amantle Montsho’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ samples. Both of these tested positive for traces of methylhexaneamine and her case was then passed onto the IAAF and then to Botswana’s national federation.

Bantsi said that if Montsho appealed, the IAAF could review her case and the 2 year ban. She was one of the 2 year athletes to fail the test that year. The other athlete was Nigerian, Chika Amalaha, who was stripped of her gold medal after diuretics and masking agents were found in her tests. 

Amantle Montsho Networth

Amantle Montsho is estimated to be worth $18 Million. Her networth is includes stocks, properties, yatchs and aeroplanes.

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Main image credit: iaaf.org