Future Olympic champion Josiah Tugwane was born in the small farming town of Betale on April 15, 1971.
This date, however, is conditional - for a long time the athlete did not have any documents that would confirm his identity.
He himself said that he was born three years earlier, but 1971 is still considered the official year of birth.
Tughvane's childhood could not be called happy.
His father left his family quite early, and at the age of four his mother also left him, leaving him in the care of his grandmother and uncle.
Uncle had his own farm, and little Josiah began to graze his cattle.
The child did not go to school, so he never learned to read or write.
Even after becoming a famous athlete, he remained illiterate.
When Josiah was 16 or 17 years old (he himself does not know for sure), he fled from his uncle's farm, not wanting to work as a shepherd for the rest of his life.
In a nearby town, he got a job as a gardener for a woman and once saw athletes from a local athletics club running along the roads.
Tughvane wanted to join them and ran alongside in his usual boots.
The runners were coached by Job Mahlanga.
He immediately saw great potential in the young man and the first thing he did was buy him shoes suitable for running.
Mahlangu began to support Tugvane and train him, and at the same time got a job as a cleaner in the mine.
For this, however, the young man needed documents that he never had.
To obtain a passport, Josiah's identity had to be confirmed by his parents, whom he had not heard of for many years.
Then he found a family with the same surname, which agreed to help fill out the documents - it was impossible to do without this little deception.
Quite early, Tughvane expressed a desire to run marathons.
Mahlangu hesitated for a long time whether such a young and inexperienced runner should be put on such a long distance, but still included him in his team for the competition in Sun City in 1991.
Josiah was able to reach the finish line from the very first attempt and at the same time took fifth place.
At this time, the era of apartheid was ending in South Africa, and the country was able to again compete in the Olympic Games - new prospects opened up for Josiah and other South African athletes.
In 1992, Tughwane competed in the South African Marathon Championship and finished fourth.
He was supposed to be included in the team as a reserve, but instead of him an athlete flew to Barcelona, who took seventh place.
Josiah took this as a signal that he needed to gain experience in order to be on the team next time.
The very next year he won the national marathon in Pretoria, and in 1995 the entire marathon community learned about him after a beautiful victory in Honolulu.
Tughwane set a pace from the start that only the superstar of those years Benson Masya from Kenya could maintain, but he gave up right before the finish line.
With the money he earned for the victory, he was able to buy himself a supported car.
As it turned out, this purchase almost cost him his life.
In February 1996, Josiah won the South African Championship and got the opportunity to go to the Atlanta Olympics - a dream come true for an illiterate South African janitor.
A few days later Tughvane drove along the road in the evening and picked up two fellow travelers.
At some point, one of them took out a pistol and demanded the keys to the car.
Josiah resisted, and then the attacker fired - the bullet hit the soft part of the chin and left a bleeding wound.
Tughvane jumped out of the car and badly injured his back.
At that moment, he could hardly walk, and after all, there were only five months left before the Olympics.
The runner was rescued in the mine office - they paid for rehabilitation and hired a physiotherapist.
Josiah, whose face was now "decorated" with a long scar, was able to get back in shape after three weeks and go to the training camp.
During them, rotten teeth were also found in Tughvane, which had to be urgently removed.
There were no clear favorites in the marathon that year who could single-handedly win the race.
In addition, Atlanta was extremely hot and humid.
This forced the marathon participants to run most of the distance in a single group, saving strength for the finish.
Only after 30 kilometers, the peloton began to rapidly decline, and only three athletes remained in the lead - Tughwane, South Korean Lee Bon Joo and Kenyan Eric Vainayna.
They continued to stick together until they arrived at the stadium, when Josiah finally decided to speed up.
The rivals reacted in time and closed the distance from the South African, but he still remained the first.
Until the last moment, it was not clear who would win.
As a result, Tughwane was the first to cross the finish line, winning only three seconds from Lee Bong Joo - never before in the Olympic marathon there was such a small gap.
Josiah became the first black South African to win Olympic gold.
Before him, marathon runners from Africa had not won in 28 years.
Tugvane dedicated his gold to Nelson Mandela, to whom he was grateful for the liberation of his country from apartheid.
The story of a former shepherd and gardener who could not read and survived a robbery became a decoration of the Atlanta Olympics.
The following year, Josiah won the Fukuoka marathon, setting a personal best (2:07:28) along the way, after which his career began to decline. For some time he still won races, but less and less prestigious. In 2000, Tughwane took 20th place at the Sydney Olympics, and failed to finish at the next two World Championships. The last time he started in 2009, after which he retired.