'Lazy boy' from S. Africa on his way to Olympic medal

A boy from the poor township of Garankuwa outside Pretoria, is the only African in the world to have qualified in his weight division for the martial arts of taekwondo at the Olympics.

South Africa's Duncan Mahlangu was seven years old when he saw a karate movie and thought: "I can do that".

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Today, the boy from the poor township of Garankuwa outside Pretoria, is the only African in the world to have qualified in his weight division for the martial arts of taekwondo at the Olympics.

"I'm just a lazy boy from Garankuwa," says the shy Mahlangu who ranks second in the world and who will celebrate his 21st birthday in Athens.

"I always do things and then afterwards I am amazed at what I did. I think, wow, that was me."

Mahlangu had all the odds against him. Born into apartheid South Africa as the youngest of five children, his father died at an early age and his mother had to support the family on the salary of a domestic worker.

At the age of 13, after spending many a day playing karate games in the township with his brother, Mahlangu approached a school teacher who in his spare time practised taekwondo and asked to train with him.

"He said: 'Why?' I said, well, because I like the kicking and jumping," recalls Mahlangu while sitting at the cafeteria of the Pretoria training centre for the Olympic team.

A year later he won a gold medal at his first competition.

"I was surprised, and oh, my coach was surprised. He was like, you can do that? And my family, my mom, used to say I'm lazy. They didn't even think I could win a medal and the coach didn't think so either. It was amazing to get the medal there.

"That was when I really realised I can do this and my coach started concentrating on me."

He never looked back.

In 2001, he won the bronze medal in his first international competition and was selected to go to a training camp in Korea where he met Master Junhuyn Cho who has remained his coach until now.

Between keeping up with his schoolwork by correspondance and learning to speak Korean -- his mother tongue is Ndebele, a language similiar to Zulu -- Mahlangu also had to adjust to harsh new training methods.

"These Eastern people, they do this for a living. I was introduced to how the Koreans train. Three times a day, every day, Monday to Monday. I was used to training four times a week," he says with a laugh.

"I had to start everything at the beginning. They said my kicking was really not good kicking. Everything I did, they said, oh, that's not good. But the result of that was very, very good."

From then onwards, he was training "seriously". This means nine hours a day except on Sundays when he gets a "break" -- then he trains for only six hours.

The World Olympic Qualifying tournament for Athens took place in December 2003. He won his match by one point.

"It was my dream to go to the Olympics but people used to say that qualifying is hard. I won and I was like, wow. I'm going. That one point is the one that took me to the Olympics," he says with his easy smile.

Mahlangu weighs 68 kilograms (150 pounds) and competes in the bantam featherweight division.

So what will happen at the August 13-29 Olympics?

"I want a medal," he says with simple determination. "Going to the Olympics for me is only halfway. But if I get the medal there, then I will say, yes, these past four years have been worth it.

"I have to prove that I'm different. I have to come back with something that says, here you go."