Going for gold
The world athletics championships are almost upon us. In August, the world’s best in track and field will descend on London for the biennial showpiece. Five years ago, the city hosted the Olympic Games and South Africa delivered only one medal in athletics – Caster Semenya’s silver in the women’s 800m (although Russian Mariya Savinova was subsequently stripped of her gold medal for doping during the period, and banned).
Our other successes from those Games were in swimming and in rowing. Periods of strength in sport often go in cycles and with the athletics world championships ahead, South African athletics is building to produce a much more bountiful haul of silverware. Perhaps Jamaican Usain Bolt in his final major assignment before retiring will hog most of the headlines at London 2017.
As a multiple world and Olympic champion, that is his due.
But Bloemfontein’s Wayde van Niekerk is a major contender for the Bolt throne and he showed at the weekend with his SA 200m title, in a world-leading time for 2017, that having already usurped the 400m throne of another legend of the track in American Michael Johnson, he may have some more bigname victims in mind.
It is not always easy to state definitively who is the best in any athletics event at a given time. Heading to a big meeting like London, athletes seek to peak specifically for the final, and even if they do compete in headto-heads, they might perform within themselves, happy in the knowledge that their technical preparation, for instance the start and final dip in the sprints, or final-straight burst in multi-lap races, are in good order.
Putting down solid markers as Van Niekerk, Luvo Manyonga in the long jump, Semenya in the 800m and Akani Simbine in the 100m did in the nationals in Potchefstroom on Friday and Saturday, will have been noted by their competitors around the world.
And against a background in which the administration of the sport domestically is seen by many as sorely lacking, the athletes themselves have jumped to the task of marketing themselves. They deserve our support on and off the track.