Jobodwana comes through hard time
Local sprinter learns to trust his body again after two lean years
Anaso Jobodwana, the man who kickstarted South Africa’s sprint revolution, is bubbling with renewed confidence after two lean seasons.
The fear of breaking down again had weighed heavily on the injury-prone athlete; he had lost 2014 to a difficult-to-detect hernia and 2016 to a painful pelvic problem.
The psychological blow was massive, and early this year Jobodwana was threatening to retire if his body failed him one more time.
He ran under the radar through 2017, but withstanding the rigours of competition gave him hope.
Now that old sparkle is back in his eyes and he’s looking for an explosive 2018 that he hopes will include making his Commonwealth Games debut in Gold Coast, Australia, in April.
“If I’m going to be 100% at the Commonwealth Games I would need to have a 20.0sec, 19.9sec in the 200m and I would need to have at least cracked a sub-10 in the 100m,” he said.
That’s big talk coming from an athlete who has been under 20 seconds only once in his life — winning bronze at the 2015 world championships. His 100m best is 10.10.
“That’s realistically based on who’s going to be at the Commonwealth Games. So if I’m going to be ready I’m going to need to crack those times,” Jobodwana said in Johannesburg this week at the launch of the Athletix Grand Prix series set for March.
Some pundits look down at the Commonwealth Games, but Jobodwana points out the only top nation missing is the US. Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Canada are there.
“I’m really hoping with the Commonwealth Games I can just prove to myself I’m back, no major injuries are going to happen to me where I’m out for a year again and I can just build [for] 2018, 2019, 2020.”
Jobodwana, who is preparing to become a dad a couple of weeks before the Games, has been without a full-time coach since early 2016, when he relocated to Durban from the US for rehabilitation. But he’s hoping to sort out visa issues soon to return to America.
He said: “I think I’m close to being settled with a coach in the US.”
There are obvious disadvantages to not having that expert eye trackside, but Jobodwana has a positive spin too.
Moments of magic
“Me being without a coach . . . [allowed] me to remember the reasons why I started athletics,” said Jobodwana, 25. “It’s one thing to come to training and there’s a coach there working out things for you.
“When you’re going to the track and some days you don’t even feel like going, doing the work-out on your own, it reminds you, if I didn’t really still love track, if I didn’t really still want to be the best, then ‘days missed’ would be 40,” he said with a laugh.
There were moments this season when he produced some old magic.
Like when he clocked 10.19 at the South African championships in April while running the last 10m almost sideways, and more recently going 20.11 in the 200m, although the wind reading was just over the legal limit.
While he’s been out in the cold, Wayde van Niekerk and Akani Simbine have dominated the sprint spotlight the past two years.
But it was Jobodwana who made South Africa’s first international breakthrough, getting into the 200m final at the 2012 London Olympic Games, then winning the 100m-200m double at the World Student Games the following year.
He, Van Niekerk and Simbine all went to the 2013 world championships, but Jobodwana posted the best results, again making the top eight in the 200m.
He believes injury cost him a 200m podium spot at the Rio Games. “It kind of sucks thinking about it, but that was a medal in the bag, for sure. It’s just taking that emotion and anguish and using it towards the future.”
I’m really hoping with the Commonwealth Games I can prove to myself I’m back Anaso Jobodwana South African sprinter