Images : Roger Sedres / ImageSA & Reg Caldecott |
Elation , disappointment , elation … that about sums up the Carina Horn ’ s first few months of 2018 . In February she bettered the SA Indoor Record for 60m twice , first clocking 7.10 seconds to finally beat Wendy Hartman ’ s 7.15 SA Record , which had stood since 1999 , and then two days later she took another hundredth of a second off the record . “ We worked hard on improving my speed over the first 20 metres , as that was where I always lost out in races ,” she says about the hard work she put in with her Austrian coach Rainer Schopf . That meant she arrived at the World Indoor Champs in Birmingham in the first week of March ranked joint eighth on the then IAAF indoor rankings , meaning she had a realistic chance of making the final at the Champs . “ It has always been my goal to compete in a major final , but the statistics were sort of against me . Times of 11.15 in the 100 or 7.19 over 60 metres had never been good enough to qualify for the big finals . Now was the first time that according to the statistics I had a realistic chance to go through to the final eight ,” says Carina .
She posted an opening run of 7.23 in the first round , finishing second in her heat and thus qualifying automatically for the semi-final round . Eight hours later Carina lined up again , knowing that another toptwo finish would put her in her first major final . Failing
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that , she had to run one of the two ‘ fastest loser ’ times outside of the top two positions to go through . Mujinga Kambundji of Switzerland won that third and final semi in 7.10 , but it required acute photo-finish analysis to determine whether Carolle Zahi or Carina had clinched second place . Heartbreakingly for Carina , the Frenchwoman was given a time of 7.17 to her 7.18 , which meant she missed an automatic berth in the final by just one hundredth of a second ! Worse news was to follow : Her time also put her just three one-hundredths of a second behind the second ‘ fastest loser ’ time of 7.15 .
In spite of her disappointment , the result in Birmingham just spurred Carina on , and she immediately said she would be gunning for the outright SA Record over 100m at the SA Track and Field Champs two weeks later , on her home track in Pretoria . She had been co-holder of the outdoor record since 2015 , having equalled Evette De Klerk ’ s 11.06 time that had stood since 1990 , but on 15 March , Carina blitzed down the home straight in 11.03 to finally remove that 28-year-old record from top spot on the list . And she believes she can go still faster . “ I know now that I am capable of dipping under
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Hard at work to achieve her goals |
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