Women’s medley team may miss Paris Olympics
When the final numbers are crunched to determine Olympic relay qualification, the SA women’s 4x100m medley outfit is likely to discover they missed out by 0.21 sec or a single spot.
They failed to advance to the evening finals at the World Championships in Doha on Sunday, but the bigger prize at stake was a spot at the Paris Games later in 2024.
The squad of Milla Drakopoulos (backstroke), Lara van Niekerk (breaststroke), Erin Gallagher (butterfly) and Emma Chelius (freestyle) finished 10th overall in 4min 03.54sec.
Unlike previous Olympics, where a few relay spots have been allotted to the fastest teams not qualifying at the World Championships, the system has changed for Paris 2024.
Only performances at the 2023 and 2024 World Championships are being considered. The top three teams in 2023 were automatic qualifiers, with the remaining 13 berths to be decided by the fastest times achieved at the two galas.
After Sunday’s heats, the 13th-fastest time seemed to be the 4:03.33 clocked by Denmark in Fukuoka in 2023.
Two crucial performances on Sunday pushed SA into 14th spot. Hong Kong improved their time from 4:04.89 in Fukuoka to 4:02.34 in Doha, and Singapore, who did not feature in Fukuoka, edged out SA with an effort of 4:02.88 in the same heat to rank ninth overall in the morning.
The SA record in this event is 4:01.92, set by Gallagher, Rebecca Meder, Tatjana Schoenmaker and Aimee Canny in 2021.
The men’s medley relay team of Pieter Coetzé, Matthew Randle, Chad le Clos and Clayton Jimmie did not get close, ending 16th overall in 3:37.29.
Matthew Sates, the only individual swimmer in action in the morning, was way off the mark in the 400m individual medley, finishing his heat in a distant 4:25.04 for an overall ranking of 17th.
The slowest qualifying time for Sunday’s final was 4:15.84. Sates’ 4:11.58 best, set in 2022, would have been faster than the quickest morning effort, 4:12.51 by American David Johnston.
Coetzé and Van Niekerk were SA’s last remaining competitors in the evening, swimming in the 50m backstroke and 50m breaststroke, respectively.