In 2023, Shanae Williams qualified for the Olympic pathway with a silver at the African Games. Then she got sick. Pushed through. Her heart gave in. Doctors pulled her out of training for six months — and she spent that time asking herself whether she wanted to do any of this ever again.

She's now the 2025 Africa Elite Women's Triathlon Champion over Olympic distance, the 2025 Africa Sprint Champion, a four-time SA Sprint National Champion, and a Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games representative for South Africa. Not bad for someone who started out as a water polo player and synchronised swimmer, and whose first proper triathlon involved renting a bike, riding ten minutes the day before, and racing with basic cage pedals because she'd never ridden a road bike in her life.

In this episode of The Active Hobo Podcast: Femme Series, Shanae sits down to talk about the unlikely path from a Cape Town school pool to the World Triathlon Championship Series, why the hardest six months of her life ended up being the most clarifying, what it takes to chase an Olympic dream from a country that barely publicises the sport she competes in, and why she's spending the next two years pointing everything at Los Angeles 2028.

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0:00 ★ Meet Shanae: Africa's Elite Women's Triathlon Champion

2:07 ★ From water polo and synchronised swimming to the Cape Town waterfront

3:04 ★ Renting a bike the day before her first World Series schools challenge

9:21 ★ The decision to go all-in after high school

11:23 ★ Why the swim is the hardest part — and why it made her career

14:37 ★ How World Triathlon actually works (and why it isn't Ironman)

20:20 ★ Commonwealth Games Birmingham 2022

25:00 ★ The sport nobody in South Africa is allowed to see

28:20 ★ Transitions, mounting at speed, and the cost of a pinky toe over the line

29:45 ★ African Games silver, food poisoning, and the Olympic qualifier that got away

30:54 ★ Six months off the bike: the heart virus that almost ended it

33:34 ★ Why she didn't quit — and what 2028 looks like

34:21 ★ Moving home: why happy athletes are faster athletes

41:54 ★ Shoes, sponsors and the art of rotating gear

51:00 ★ Falling in love with Cape Town cycling culture

The Brutal Reality of Elite Triathlon (No One Talks About This