Isaac Makwala has African, Commonwealth and Olympic decorations, and has another shot at progress at the World Athletics Championships
Five years on from being constrained out of the 400m last at the World Athletics Championships in the midst of immense contention, Isaac Makwala heads to Oregon goal on winning the one decoration missing from his assortment.
For while Botswana's best runner has won awards at the Olympics, the African Championships and Commonwealth Games, the 36-year-old presently can't seem to remain on the platform notwithstanding five past visits to the World Championships.
His most noteworthy possibility was back in 2017, when Makwala was as his life, just to be denied an opportunity to show the 400m last to authorities attempting to end a norovirus flare-up they portrayed as "extremely harmful".
"I have incomplete business with the World Championships," Makwala, who will drape up his spikes toward the finish of the time, told BBC Sport Africa.
"The current year's Championships are significant for me since I missed the [400m] in 2017, and in 2019 I didn't go to Doha since I was harmed.
"This will be my last World Championships, and this is the decoration that I'm missing - so my objective is just that."
Having set six of his main 10 individual best 400m times in 2017, Makwala was in top shape when he showed up in London as one of his occasion's top choices for the World Championships that August.
Just a month sooner, he had turned into the principal man in history to run a sub-20 seconds in the 200m (establishing a public standard of 19.77s) and a sub-44 seconds in the 400m (43.92s) around the same time at an IAAF challenge meeting in Madrid, Spain.
Expected to go head to head against South Africa's 2016 Olympic boss and 400m world record holder Wayde van Niekerk in both the 200m and 400m, he was banished from the last's conclusive.
Supposed to be among 30 competitors and authorities impacted by a flare-up of norovirus, Makwala firmly denied this at that point.
"I regurgitated once and they concluded that I was debilitated," the devastated competitor said in 2017 as he was requested to leave the arena before the 400m last.
Van Niekerk became title holder without even a trace of his nearest challenger, who has still yet to continue on from the interests that encompassed his support that day completely.