An explosive Olympic 10,000m Olympic final saw South Africa's Adriaan Wildschutt produce a stunning performance.

Adriaan Wildschutt is not a name familiar to most South Africans, but it should be. He arguably produced the country's best performance at the Paris Olympic Games in a 10,000m final of staggeringly high quality that will, probably, be lost in footnotes in years to come.

The 26-year-old Wildschutt, whose talent was spotted by former women's 5,000m world record holder Zola Budd-Pieterse, crossed the line in the final in a stunning national record of 26:50.64, nearly 10 seconds faster than the Olympic record.

advertisementDon't want to see this? Remove adsYou know, the Olympic record held by Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, one of the greatest distance athletes of all time, set in Beijing in 2008.

Put another way, Wildschutt's time and performance would have won every previous Olympic final in history. And he would've won them by at least 60m, when you calculate that they ran about 6m per second in the race. It was a supreme run by the little-known man from Ceres.

Wildschutt, who was inspired to run by older brother Nadeel, and whose only early ambition and goal was to set a clock to 20 minutes and try to cover more distance in that time each day, he...