TRACK & FIELD
Busy Year Back Home
For South African fans and followers of the sport there is much to look forward to in 2022 on both the local and international front . Athletics South Africa has put together an ambitious track and field season that features five Grand Prix Meetings from March to May as well as the SA Youth and Junior Championships ( March ) and SA Senior Championships ( April ), and while this has not yet been confirmed yet , ASA has also included a Junior and Senior Trials competition on their preliminary calendar for May .
In terms of SA Champs on the road , the Marathon Championships will be in Durban in May , the Half Marathon Championships in Gqeberha in June , and the 10km Championships in Pretoria in August . When you add the Nedbank Runified 50km in Gqeberha in March , as well as the Two Oceans Marathon ( April ), Comrades Marathon ( August ) and Sanlam Cape Town Marathon ( October ), plus the Absa Run Your City Series ( May , July and September ) and the Spar Grand Prix Series ( May to October ), you have a busy time on the local front !
With such a busy schedule the next question is obviously going to be what we can expect from our track athletes in 2022 . It would seem obvious that they will need to pick their competitions carefully , as they may not be able to peak three times in the space of eight weeks for African Champs , World Champs and Commonwealth Games ( or World Under-20 Champs ), but all of our big names in track and field have made one thing clear : They intend to compete at the Africa Championships , World Championships and Commonwealth Games !
Title Defence : Akani Simbine
For Simbine , that means he wants to defend his Africa and Commonwealth Games titles , and he wants to do better than his fourth place at the 2019 World Championships . Simbine was out-and-out favourite for the 2018 Africa Championships and won convincingly . It will be a much tougher ask in 2022 , as he will likely face the man who took his Africa 100m record from him , Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya . Simbine had taken the Africa 100m record to 9.84
Track & Field Calendar 2022
The 2022 calendar is very much provisional , as the dates for SA fixtures are still subject to final confirmation , and all dates may change if the COVID pandemic continues to wreak havoc around the globe , but for now this is the schedule that our top athletes are trying to plan around .
11-12 Mar SA Provincial Championships ( Various )
18-20 Mar World Indoor Champsionships ( Belgrade , Serbia )
23 Mar ASA Athletics Grand Prix 1 ( Bloemfontein )
30 Mar ASA Athletics Grand Prix 2 ( Cape Town )
30 Mar-2 Apr SA U16 , U18 & U20 Championships ( Potchefstroom )
6 Apr ASA Athletics Grand Prix 3 ( Potchefstroom )
13 Apr ASA Athletics Grand Prix 4 ( Johannesburg )
21-23 Apr SA Senior Championships ( Cape Town )
29-30 Apr SA Relay & Multi Events Championships ( Mbombela )
8-12 Jun CAA Africa Championships ( Mauritius )
9 June Diamond League 5 ( Rome , Italy )
16 Jun Diamond League 6 ( Oslo , Norway )
18 Jun SA Winter League 2 ( TBC )
18 Jun Diamond League 7 ( Paris , France )
26 Jun-7 Jul FISU World University Games ( Chengdu , China )
30 Jun Diamond League 8 ( Stockholm , Sweden )
2 Jul SA Winter League 3 ( TBC )
15-24 Jul World Athletics Championships ( Eugene , USA )
5-7 May USSA Championships ( Cape Town ) 16 Jul SA Winter League 4 ( TBC )
13 May |
Diamond League 1 ( Doha , Qatar ) |
30 Jul |
Diamond League 9 ( Shanghai , |
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China ) |
21 May ASA Athletics Grand Prix 5 ( Cape Town )
1-6 Aug World U20 Championships ( Cali , Columbia )
21 May |
Diamond League 2 ( London , UK ) |
2-8 Aug |
Commonwealth Games |
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( Birmingham , UK ) |
27-28 May SA Senior & Juniors Trials ( Durban ) 6 Aug Diamond League 10 ( TBC , China ) 28 May Diamond League 3 ( Eugene , USA ) 10 Aug Diamond League 11 ( Monaco )
4 Jun |
SA Winter League 1 ( TBC ) |
26 Aug |
Diamond League 12 ( Lausanne , |
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Switzerland ) |
5 Jun Diamond League 4 ( Rabat , Saudi Arabia )
6-10 Jun All Africa University Games ( Nairobi , Kenya )
2 Sep Diamond League 13 ( Brussels , Belgium )
7-8 Sep Diamond League 14 ( Zurich , Switzerland )
Akani Simbine seconds in Hungary in July 2021 . Omanyala became the first African to go sub 9.8 when clocking 9.77 in Nairobi in September 2021 . It needs to be added that Nairobi lies at 1795m altitude and Omanyala would have been enormously aided by that .
Wayde van Niekerk
Based on Simbine ’ s impressive array of 33 sub-10s since 2015 , and his experience , you would expect him to still be favourite . He should also be considered favourite to retain his Commonwealth title , but the World Championships is going to be another kettle of fish altogether . And not just for Simbine . Expect the Americans to come out hard , as the championships are on their home turf , at their spiritual home track , and they have a ridiculously deep stable of athletes who could all finish on the podium .
Return to Glory : Wayde van Niekerk
Van Niekerk is undoubtedly one of the most talented athletes , if not the most talented , to ever emerge from South Africa , but he looked a shadow of himself in
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