NEWS
I n t h e
Compiled by Sean Falconer
Medal Haul at African Champs
The CAA African Senior Championships in Asaba, Nigeria in the first few days of August saw Team South Africa bag 30 medals( nine gold, 13 silver and eight bronze) to finish second behind Kenya on the final medals table.
Commonwealth Games champion Akani Simbine added the African men’ s 100m title to his honours list, winning in 10.25 seconds, while former SA Record-holder Simon Magakwe recovered from a poor start to grab the bronze medal in 10.35. In the 200m, Ncincilili Titi charged over the line in 20.46, with Luxolo Adams bagging bronze in 20.60. Thapelo Phora set a personal best of 45.14 to grab silver in the men’ s 400m final.
Antonio Alkana retained his African crown by winning the men’ s 110m hurdles in a dominant 13.51, while Cornel Fredericks took silver in the 400m hurdles to cap a superb comeback from injury. Continuing the form that saw her break the SA Record, Rikenette Steenkamp earned a silver medal in the women’ s 100m hurdles, clocking 13.18, while Wenda Nel added a bronze in the women’ s 400m hurdles with her 57.04 effort.
The men’ s 4x100m relay team took gold in 38.25, only just missing the SA Record by 0.01 seconds, with Akani and Simon joined in the final by Emile Erasmus and Commonwealth silver medallist Henricho Bruintjies. Meanwhile, the men’ s 4x400m team took silver with their 3:03.50 effort.
Caster Semenya smashed Heide Seyerling’ s nearly 18-year-old SA Record in the 400m, storming across the line in 49.96 to become the first SA woman to dip under 50 seconds. She then added a second gold by winning the 800m in 1:56.06.
In an exciting men’ s long jump event, Ruswahl Samaai retained his continental title with a best jump of 8.45m to beat countryman and World Champion Luvo Manyonga by 2cm, while Lynique Beneke added a long jump bronze in the women’ s competition with her 6.38m leap. In the men’ s triple jump, Khotso Mokoena snatched silver with a final leap of 16.83m, while Zinzi Chabangu took silver in the women’ s triple jump with 13.59m. Delivering yet another medal double, men’ s high jumper Chris Moleya bagged silver after clearing 2.26m, and Mpho Links took bronze with 2.15m. In the men’ s pole vault, Valco van Wyk grabbed the runner-up spot with a clearance of 5.10m.
In the men’ s discus, Victor Hogan and Werner Visser added another gold-silver double, Victor winning with a 60.06m heave and Werner finishing second with 58.82m. Meanwhile, World Junior Champ Kyle Blignaut took bronze in the men’ s shot put with a 19.05m heave. Ischke Senekal earned bronze in the women’ s discus with a best heave of 53.82m, then was part of another medal double as she won the shot put with a 17.24m effort, with Mieke Strydom taking bronze( 15.99m). The javelin throwers added two more silvers, with Phil-Mar van Rensburg reaching 76.57m in the men’ s competition, and former women’ s World Junior Champs medallist Jo-Ane van Dyk reaching 53.72m.
Two more silvers were added by Fredriech Pretorius, who finished second in the decathlon( 7733 points), while Lebogang Shange clocked 1:25:24 in the men’ s 20km race walk to complete his African Champs collection – he won gold in Morrocco( 2014) and bronze in Durban( 2016).
SA Tri Duo in Top 10 in Montreal
Triathletes Richard Murray and Henri Schoeman both finished in the top 10 at the ITU World Triathlon event in Montreal, Canada on 26 August. Richard took fourth place, covering the 1.5km swim, 40km cycle and 10km run in 1:48:36, with Commonwealth Games gold medallist Henry coming home sixth a further 34 seconds back. Henry dominated the swim, but has only recently returned from a three-month lay-off due to injury and illness, and thus didn’ t quite have the speed to stay with the leaders on the bike leg. Meanwhile, Richard only just lost out on third position when Australian Jake Birtwhistle caught him at the line.
Diamond League Wins for SA Stars
Caster Semenya and Luvo Manyonga added to the growing list of international honours won by SA’ s track and field athletes when they clinched the overall 2018 Diamond League series titles in their events at the IAAF Diamond League finals in Zurich, Switzerland on 30 August.
Caster led from start to finish in the women’ s 800m, clocking 1:55.27 to win by a clear two seconds, and clinching her third consecutive Diamond League series title. She remains unbeaten over 800m for the past three years! Just three days later Caster shattered her own SA Record for 1000m at the IAAF World Challenge meeting in Berlin, improving the mark from 2:31.01 to 2:30.70. And still she was not done: Six days after that, she broke the SA women’ s record for 400m for the second time in just over a month at the IAAF Continental Cup in Ostrava, Czech Republic, crossing the line in 49.62 to improve on the 49.96 she ran at the African Champs in Nigeria.
Back in Zurich, the men’ s long jump competition saw Commonwealth Games
Images: Craig Kolesky / Red Bull Content Pool, Roger Sedres / ImageSA, Trevlyn Mayo Palframan, BackTrack Sports & courtesy IRunFar. com, Cape Town Marathon
8 ISSUE 111 OCTOBER 2018 / www. modernathlete. co. za