TOTSIENS, TANNIE ANS
Wayde van Niekerk off to new coach in US
● Wayde van Niekerk’s journey to train in the US could take a while because of Covid19 regulations and SA’s red-label status, his agent Peet van Zyl said yesterday morning.
The Olympic 400m champion announced on Friday that he had split from his long-time mentor Tannie Ans Botha to train under sprint coach Lance Brauman in Claremont, Florida.
But the uncertainty resulting from lockdown restrictions means Van Niekerk is still training in SA, albeit on his new programme.
His stablemates will include loudmouthed 200m world titleholder Noah Lyles and the women’s 400m Olympic champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo.
Brauman’s biggest challenge could be keeping two stars like Lyles and Van Niekerk content. Any athlete will tell you that track and field is about handling egos.
Should personality clashes surface, they will happen whether the duo are training in the same group or even out of sight of each other.
It’s not just about two alpha dogs dominating two sprint distances adjacent to each other, it’s about claiming the mantle of world’s best sprinter in the absence of Usain Bolt, the holy grail of track racing.
The Jamaican had tipped Van Niekerk as a possible heir apparent ahead of the 2017 world championships in London, where the SA star attempted to emulate Michael Johnson’s 200m-400m double from 1995.
Van Niekerk had broken Johnson’s 400m world mark at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, lowering it to 43.03sec.
In London, Van Niekerk retained the 400m world strap he’d won at Beijing 2015, but he had to settle for what seemed to be a painful silver in the 200m, crying during a television interview a few minutes later.
Lyles, an undeniable talent, has tipped himself as the man most likely to beat Bolt’s two world records.
How Brauman manages the two of them will be closely scrutinised.
The other element is going to be how Van Niekerk adapts to his new coach.
Tannie Ans watched him grow up from a teen troubled by injury to world conqueror. She was the one who pulled him out of the 100m and 200m sprints and steered him into the 400m to overcome his persistent hamstring problems.
She has been a mother figure to him, a shoulder he can cry on. After the semifinals at the Rio Games Van Niekerk had complained about niggles and injuries, but Botha knew it was all in his head.
Shortly before the final the two of them sat together, praying and crying.
Van Niekerk and Botha were a South African partnership up there with likes of John Kani and Athol Fugard, Baby Jake Matlala and Theo Mthembu, Des and Dawn Lindberg or even Paul Nash and airforce major John Short.
Great grandmother
The athlete said a key factor in his decision to leave Botha was to link up with a strong training group that could push him to breaking his world record.
He didn’t need a group to break the mark in 2016, but circumstances have changed. A source said Botha, a great-grandmother, had struggled with mobility of late.
Van Zyl stressed the split was amicable. Van Niekerk has spoken about breaking his record since returning from his knee injury in 2017. However, he has yet to beat the 44.90 qualifying time to book his ticket to the Tokyo Olympic Game.
He might have to do that in SA if he can’t book his air ticket to Florida any time soon.