OLYMPICS
Home straight for the men ’ s 4x100m final
Silver Lining for SA
After a disappointing Tokyo Olympics in 2021 , Team South Africa went to the Paris 2024 Game hoping to restart the country ’ s steady supply of athletics medals , and our athletes duly delivered . – BY SEAN FALCONER
To date , South Africa has competed at a total of 21 Olympic Games and has won a total of 95 medals ( 28 gold , 36 silver , 31 bronze ) in 11 different sports , with athletics ( 30 ) producing the most medals , followed by swimming ( 22 ). Having enjoyed a very successful Games in 2016 in Rio , with a haul of four medals in the athletics ( two gold , two silver ), the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 proved sorely disappointing , with a no medals in the athletics . This was the first time since the country ’ s readmission to the Games in 1992 that our athletes had not come home with a single medal , although Akani Simbine came oh so close with his fourth place in the men ’ s 100m final , missing a medal by just four hundredths of a second ! Thankfully , the medals once again came in Paris 2024 , and Simbine was finally able to claim one of them .
Silver in the Men ’ s 4x100m
Sadly , Akani Simbine is sometimes referred to as the ‘ nearly man ’ of the men ’ s 100m , because in his career , he has narrowly missed out on a medal a number of times . Prior to Paris 2024 , he had finished fourth and fifth in two previous Olympic 100m finals , and he had also finished fourth once and fifth twice at the World Championships 100m finals . As part of the SA 4x100m relay team , he had also come close to a medal a number of times , or seen the team fail to finish due to baton handover problems , or worse , win a World Relay Champs gold medal , only to have it stripped due a team member testing positive for a banned substance . After still more heartbreak in Paris this year , Simbine finally has an Olympic medal to show for all his years of effort .
In the 100m final , he clocked a blistering 9.84 seconds to break his own South African Record , but once again had to settle for a fourth place , which meant the relay was his last chance of that elusive medal . And when relay teammate Benjamin Richard injured himself in his 200m semi-final , it looked like that chance might be slipping away as well . It left SA with a decidedly young quartet in the 4x100m final , with schoolboy Bayanda Walaza ( 18 ) and Bradly Nkoana ( 19 ) lining up with 23-year-old Shaun Maswanganyi and the ‘ old man ’ of the team , Simbine ( 30 ) on the anchor leg .
Akani Simbine , Bradly Nkoana , Bayanda Walaza and Shaun Maswanganyi
The youngsters kept the team in the mix , but were just outside the medals most of the way . Then Simbine took the baton , and turned fifth place into second place as he blitzed his leg in 8.78 seconds , overtaking the French , Japanese and Italian teams , and only just narrowly running out track in terms of catching the Canadians as well . That was enough to claim the silver medal for South Africa in 37.57 seconds ( New African and South African Record ), behind Canada ’ s 37.50 , with Great Britain taking bronze in 37.61 .
Silver in the Women ’ s Javelin
In years gone by , the South African flag was proudly flown in the women ’ s javelin event by Sunette Viljoen , who claimed a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics , as well as a silver and a bronze at World Champs and four podium finishes ( including two golds ) at the Commonwealth Games . Now the country has a new heroine in the javelin event , thanks to Jo-Ané van Dyk ’ s silver medal performance in Paris in 2024 , to cap a real breakthrough year for her .
At the start of this year , her best was 61.61m , but she has been in great form in 2024 , and in the qualifying round in Paris , she set a new personal best of 64.22m , having never thrown the javelin over 64m before . That was enough to win her qualifying group , but four women in the other group recorded longer throws , so a medal in the final looked possible , but not guaranteed . In the final , Van Dyk ’ s thirdround effort soared out to 63.93m , with only Japan ’ s Haruka Kitaguchi having gone further , with a first-round effort of 65.80m to lead the competition .
That ’ s how it stayed for the rest of the competition , with Kitaguchi adding the Olympic title to her World Champs title , Van Dyk claiming a somewhat unexpected silver , and bronze going to Nikola Ogrodnikova of Czechia ( 63.68m ). To be fair , no throw under 64 metres has won an Olympic medal since the current weight specifications for the women ’ s javelin were introduced in 1999 , but as the old saying goes , the only thing that matters is the final result , and Jo-Ané van Dyk has an Olympic silver medal to show for it .
Jo-Ané van Dyk , Haruka Kitaguchi and Nikola Ogrodnikova
Images : Mattia Ozbot , Christel Saneh , Dan Vernon – All for World Athletics
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