Rugby: Kolbe, the South African elf who ran away from gangs

In the South Africa of the giants, a 1.71 cm, 76 kg elf stands out. His name is Cheslin Kolbe: he spent years being told that he didn’t have the body to play rugby, now he is the best winger in the world and has won two consecutive World Cups with the Springboks. His South Africa has just humiliated France by playing with one man less, with Kolbe in amazing form capable of taking 3 Bleus with him in every possession, and on Saturday they will face Italy in Turin in a real crash test for the Azzurri. Kolbe tackles people 30 kg bigger than him without any problems, he takes sensational blows from giants and gets up again, when he gets the ball in his hands he is uncatchable, he jumps higher than people who are 20 cm taller than him: fear? You can’t have that when you grow up in the “Cape Flats”, the ghettos of Cape Town, and you’ve seen things normally people only see in movies. Kolbe grew up between Kraaifontein and Scottsville, where his grandmother lived: “Something was always happening. I remember the big gang activity, the drug dealing, the violence: all this was normal. Children should see different things, but there was only this. I remember two episodes: I was leaving school and some of my friends ended up in the middle of an argument, a man pulled out a gun and started shooting. I ran in the opposite direction towards my grandmother’s house. I was shaking. I couldn’t stop And then another time, 100 meters from my grandmother’s house, two boys stopped me. They didn’t say anything. One touched the chain I was wearing around my neck and then took out a knife and pointed it at my ribs. I gave him the chain without even thinking. I was 12 years old.

TALENT

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Cheslin played rugby in the street, barefoot. He was talented, and that always kept him out of trouble. The ball was practically bigger than him, but he didn’t pay much attention to it, and he practiced kicking by collecting handfuls of dirt to form a pitch and trying to pass the ball between the street lamps, as if they were the goalposts of a stadium: “Growing up in Kraaifontein wasn’t easy at all, because so many things happen around you. Some of my friends took the wrong path, started taking drugs or joined a gang. Seeing all this made me a better person. strong: even though I was little I understood that it wasn’t what I wanted for myself, and it wasn’t the way my parents had raised me.” Kolbe wins a Brackenfell High School scholarship, he does what he wants with the ball, but he doesn’t grow, he will never exceed that 1.71 which for many would seem like an insurmountable limit. Not for him: “At school, as soon as I graduated, everywhere I went, someone told me to change roles or that I wouldn’t be able to do it. That I couldn’t be a winger with that physique. At a certain point it had become annoying. So I decided not to waste energy on that negativity, but to use it as motivation.” He played with the Western Province and then with the Stormers, one of the most renowned clubs in the country, he scored a barrage of tries and with the national rugby sevens team he also won Bronze at the Rio Olympics. However, there is no room for him in the senior national team: the Springboks are struggling incredibly, losing match after match (including the famous 2016 defeat in Italy) but coach Allister Coetzee doesn’t see him. Then Kolbe makes a drastic decision and leaves South Africa: he moves to Toulouse, where he becomes one of the best players in the world. But there’s a problem. According to the South African Federation, anyone with fewer than 30 appearances for the national team cannot move abroad, under penalty of exclusion from the national team. Kolbe’s career looks set to be a great one at club level, without ever wearing the Springboks shirt. But then Rassie Erasmus arrives, the genius who pulled South Africa out of the crisis: away with that absurd rule, Kolbe is very strong – and who cares about his physique – and he is called up. From 2018 he will never leave that shirt again, he will always be a starter and will be called up for the 2019 World Cup, the one of the triumph in Yokohama.

destiny

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Before leaving for Japan, however, Kolbe receives terrible news: one of his childhood friends, Wayne, is brutally killed. “He was one of the most talented kids I’ve ever seen, but he didn’t have a family behind him to support him in rugby. He was recruited by the gangs: first small deliveries, then drugs, then violence, until he became an important figure in gang wars. He was in and out of prison. Shortly before leaving for the World Cup they told me that he had died, had been tortured and then killed. As children we were like brothers. I understood how important it was for me to have parents who guided me in such a difficult context, and now I want to do the same for the others. There are many people in the same situation. But when I’m at home I try to do something more. In that World Cup Kolbe started all the important matches: he demolished Italy with a brace, drove the Japanese crazy in the quarter-finals and above all scored the title-winning goal in the final against England. And at that point, no one cares about his 171 centimeters and 76 kilos anymore. I’m a fool could think of doing without Cheslin Kolbe: 48 appearances and 131 points with South Africa (not just goals, but also a place, because all those kicks in the middle of the street lamps in the Cape Town ghettos really helped), a Champions League won with Toulouse in 2021 and above all another World Cup, the one in 2023, the one of legend. All with a disarming tranquility, because when you were running away from gangs and guns, what would it be like to jump an opponent with an oval ball in your hand.