TRACK & FIELD should just make sure of the title and leave recordchasing for another day .
Their thinking was that she should just look to win the title and stay away from injury , since conditions were not optimal for sprinting , and she already had five races under belt in two days . But Viwe had other ideas . In spite of the cold and wet conditions , the 17-year-old lined up full of confidence , and when the gun was fired , she took off . Again , the rest is history , because 23.03 seconds later Viwe had obliterated Evette ’ s record by a massive margin of 0.27 seconds . In sprinting terms , that is as good as a mile , and Viwe had made a very big statement ! Now everybody is talking about this special talent .
Finding Her Sprinting Feet
Viwe grew up in the tiny village of Beyele in the Ngcobo region of the Eastern Cape . She started her athletics career as a 400m athlete and was spotted in 2018 by a talent scout of the Tuks Sport School while competing in Gqeberha at a schools meet . She was offered a scholarship , and in 2019 moved from a rural environment to the big city environment of Pretoria . It was a complete shock to Viwe ’ s 14-year-old system , suddenly being over 1000km form home and her support base , and dealing with a new environment , homesickness and challenges on the social front made it a tough transition . to convince her to move down in distance , and the results showed immediately . By March 2021 , she was able to open her season with a 12.20 in the 100m . Three weeks later she posted an 11.86 , and in June she hit 11.67 .
Viwe was selected to run for SA at the World U20 Championships in Nairobi in August 2021 , and at the age of just 16 , she made the semi-finals of the 200m and ran a ( then ) PB of 23.84 . However , Viwe was distraught at not getting into the next round . “ She was upset , because she so badly wanted to make the final . It didn ’ t matter to her that she had just run a massive PB ,” says Paul . He had to remind her that in the space of a year , she had taken half a second off her 200m best , to go with her rapid improvement in the 100m , and that she would still have more opportunities to make finals .
A Time to Grieve
It is said that the five biggest stresses in life are birth , death , moving , marriage and divorce . By the time Viwe was 16 , she has had to already deal with two of these . First she had dealt with moving , and the homesickness brought on by a new environment , and then in January 2021 came an even bigger shock . Her brother , Vukile , was involved in a fatal car accident on his way back to Cape Town , and Viwe ’ s world was ripped apart .
On the positive side , her new coach quickly determined that she was an immense talent with terrific potential – over the shorter sprints . “ She is short and powerful , very much like three-time Olympic gold medallist Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce , so she is way more suited to the 100m and 200m ,” explains Paul . It took him just three training sessions
In an instant , Viwe had lost the family member with whom she shared the deepest bond . At 30 , Vukile was 14 years her senior , and he would often jokingly refer to her as his ‘ first born .’ Now , Viwe , the youngest of five siblings , had lost an older brother , a second father , a mentor , confidante and rock . She says the bond the two shared was such that she was
Discipline and determination in training are paying off
Eyes on the clock as another PB is added
61