TRACK & FIELD

After readmission into global athletics , South Africa has enjoyed two distinctive periods of winning medals at the World Champs , but has being going through a ‘ dry spell ’ since our most successful year in 2017 .

Year Venue Gold Silver Bronze Total 1993 Stuttgart , Germany 0 0 0 0 1995 Gothenburg , Sweden 0 0 0 0 1997 Athens , Greece 1 1 0 2

Luxolo Adams performed well to post a season best in the 200m , but that was unfortunately not enough to take him into the final

The 2023 World Athletics Championships proved another disappointing outing for the South African athletes – the country came back from Budapest sans any medals , for the third consecutive World Champs – but it ’ s not all doom and gloom , and the country ’ s athletics fans can look forward to a better showing at the 2024 Olympics . – BY NORRIE WILLIAMSON , KARIEN JONKHEERE & SEAN FALCONER

Amongst the 10 medals won by South Africa from 1997 to 2003 were five gold medals , earned by Marius Corbett ( 1997 , men ’ s javelin ), Hestrie Cloete ( 2001 & 2003 , women ’ s high jump ), Jacques Freitag ( 2003 , men ’ s high jump ) and our 4x100m relay team at the 2001 Champs , who finished second behind the USA , but were later promoted to the gold medal position when the US team was disqualified due to a doping infringement .

SA brought no medals home from the 2005 and 2007 meets , but then 2009 heralded the start of another successful period for the country , with medallists at five consecutive meets from 2009 to 2017 . This included another five gold medals , for Mbulaeni

Mulaudzi ( 2009 , men ’ s 800m ), Cater Semenya

( 2009 & 2017 , women ’ s 800m ), Wayde van Niekerk ( 2015 & 2017 , men ’ s 400m ) and Luvo Manyonga ( 2017 , men ’ s long jump ), while the country brought home a total of 17 medals from those five meets . The 2017 meet was the most successful year for SA , with six medals ( 3 gold , 1 silver and 2 bronze ).

2017 London , Great Britain 3 1 2 6 2019 Doha , Qatar 0 0 0 0 2022 Eugene , United States 0 0 0 0 2023 Budapest , Hungary 0 0 0 0

Suffering Some Setbacks

However , for various reasons the South African athletes have not been able to build on that success since then , including Wayde ’ s freak knee injury later in 2017 and Caster subsequently being banned from competing in the 800m event due to World Athletics ’ decision to not allow athletes with elevated testosterone levels to compete in certain events . That saw no medals for South Africa from either the 2019 Doha or 2022 Eugene meets , but the country ’ s hopes of medals in Budapest were still high as the 2023 meet began .

Many hoped Akani Simbine would finally turn all his fourth and fifth place finishes on the world stage into a medal , and given his form going into the Champs , he looked likely to do it this time . Meanwhile , our 4x100m team looked good for a place in the final , where another medal could be on the cards if they got it just right , especially considering they had won the World Relay Champs gold medal in 2021 ( unfortunately that was later stripped , due to a doping infringement ). Also , Wayde was considered an outside chance of a medal in the 400m , given that the World Record-holder seemed to be finding form again after his protracted comeback from that knee injury .

For some of the younger members of the team , or those attending the World Champs for the first time , it was more a case of gaining experience of competing at this level , with the aim of taking that experience into the 2024 Paris Olympics and then the 2025 World Champs in Japan . After all , some of our athletes would have needed to improve their personal bests just to advance in their events , given that minimum qualifying standards at the meet itself were quite stringent . It can be argued that even if these athletes did not advance to the next round , the experience gained is priceless .

Budapest Blow-out

All those hopes of medals were unfortunately proved forlorn , as the heat and humidity of the Hungarian summer weather coupled with the heat and intensity of the competition saw only a handful of South Africans advance to semi-final rounds or finals , and our best medal prospects fall short of the podium . Akani won his firstround heat in 9.97 seconds , with the third-fastest time overall , but in the semi-final , his reaction time at the start was 0.078 seconds , which is less than the minimum allowed 0.1 seconds , so he was disqualified . He pointed out afterwards that he has never false-started at a major meet before , and usually has a slower reaction time than many other sprinters , but accepted the officials ’ decision .

Image : Stephen Pond / Getty Images

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