A Leopard doesn't change its Spots

This is a little story I wrote to illustrate the idiom 'A Leopard doesn't change its Spots’

Senzo was relaxing at home, watching the Comrades Marathon on television. As he watched some runners being interviewed at the halfway mark, a tattooed arm slipped into view. The tattoo was of a glowing orange ball with the slogan ‘Aim for Mars, land among the stars’ woven between a scattering of silver stars. Senzo couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen that tattoo somewhere before.

The following day, Senzo was watching an analysis of the marathon results. As the sports presenter discussed the top ten finishers, a short profile of each athlete flashed on the screen. Suddenly, it hit Senzo like a thunderbolt. The tattoo he’d noticed the previous day belonged to Eric, an old college classmate. And the 9th gold medallist was none other than Eric. But the halfway mark interview took place five hours into the race. If the tattooed runner was Eric, he would have had to cover 44 kilometres in less than an hour to finish the ultramarathon in 5 hours and 47 minutes.

Three days later, Eric was on the news again. A spectator had seen him getting out of a car and rejoining the race one kilometre from the finish. Senzo then remembered something else. Several years ago, he had seen Eric taking a short cut during a college cross country race.

"Hm", thought Senzo, "a leopard doesn't change its spots".

Idiom
A leopard doesn't change its spots: negative character traits often lead to ingrained habits. A person who made poor choices in the past, such as cheating in a race, is likely to do so again.

Comrades Marathon
An ultramarathon of approximately 88 kilometres that takes place in South Africa at the beginning of every winter.