Disciplined sprinter Bayanda Walaza admits 'ice-cream is always calling me'

Teen sprint star Bayanda Walaza has embraced life as a professional athlete and the Spartan-like discipline that comes with it, but he admits it hasn’t quelled his desire for ice cream.

Walaza said his two national under-20 records — his 20.08 sec in the 200m in Johannesburg on Wednesday evening and his 9.99 in the 100m in Pretoria at the weekend — were the result of the hard work he put in on the training track during the Christmas break.

“I believe that me, in December, I was one person who was focused [on training],” said Walaza, whose two efforts automatically qualified him in both the 100m and 200m for the senior world championships in Tokyo in September.

He was the third South African to achieve the mark in the 100m after Akani Simbine and Benji Richardson, but he’s the first to do it in the 200m.

Walaza, who won the Olympic 4x100m relay silver with Simbine, Bradley Nkoana and Shaun Maswanganyi, spent his end-of-year break training in Pretoria.

“My family lives in Johannesburg, but my mom understood the situation that, ‘my boy loves sports and I cannot be angry [with] him not being home’ — because look at what I'm doing now.

“She’s seeing that now,” the 19-year-old said after his 200m victory at the Athletics South Africa grand prix meet at the University of Johannesburg.

“She’s like ‘OK, it was good to let him go because if he was with me’ — I’m one person [who likes] to eat.”

Asked if he still enjoyed ice cream — he admitted on his return he was eating it every day in the early days of the Paris Olympics before getting into the squad — the 100m and 200m under-20 world champion admitted his desire for the dessert was as strong as ever.

“I’m structuring [limiting] it good, but I cannot run away from it. It’s always calling me, ‘come eat’.”