Team SA to return from Youth Games with a handful of medals
THE South African team will return from the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires with a few firsts and a handful of medals.
South Africa’s campaign was successful, improving their medal tally from the previous Games with three golds, a silver and bronze.
The team won just one medal at the 2014 Games in Nanjing, China, courtesy of Gezelle Magerman’s gold in the 400m hurdles.
While it was nowhere near the 11 medals from the inaugural 2010 Singapore Games, the class of 2018 won the most golds.
Triathlete Amber Schlebusch, swimmer Michael Houlie and sprinter Luke Davids all claimed gold in their respective events while rising swimming star Dune Coetzee and shot putter Dane Roets won silver and bronze raising South Africa’s tally.
Gutsy Durban Girls College pupil Schlebusch laid the foundation when she won South Africa’s first Youth Olympic title in the swim-cycle-run event on the first day of the Games.
The 17-year-old from Durban produced a stunning run leg, fighting from almost a minute behind for victory to win in break the tape in a time of 58 minutes 47 seconds (58:47).
She tenaciously fought her way into contention by erasing nearly a minute advantage the leader had on her going into the run leg.
Then on Saturday morning Houlie become the first swimmer of colour to win an individual medal in the pool at a major multi-sport event by bagging the 50m breaststroke gold.
The Bishops matric learner lowered the South Africa age-group records in both the 50 and 100m breaststroke at the Games.
Houlie touched the wall in his pet 50m breaststroke event in a time of 27.51 seconds to claim the gold medal.
He finished ahead of 100m breaststroke champion Jiajun Sun of China, who touched second in 27.85secs with Canada’s Alexander Milanovich taking bronze in 27.87.
Parow High School pupil Davids rounded off South Africa’s campaign by winning the country’s first gold medal in a sprint event at the Youth Games.
Davids won both stages of the 100 metres, blitzing to victory in his final race in a wind-aided time of 10.15 seconds.
The South African youth champion was unrivalled in the blue riband race, setting up victory in the first stage of the competition clocking 10.56 – 0.20 faster than his nearest rival.
Earlier on at the Games, Coetzee became the first South African female to win a swimming medal at the Youth Olympics by winning the 200m butterfly silver.
She posted a new South African age-group record of two minutes, 11.71 seconds after finishing second to Hungary’s Bianca Berercz (2:10.37).
The final night of athletics action could easily have produced more medals for South Africa with men’s javelin thrower Jano Esterhuizen and men’s one-lap hurdler Lindokuhle Gora going into their respective second stages as resounding medal favourites.
Gora was the second-fastest 400m hurdler from the first stage clocking, 51.70s putting him in a strong position for a medal.
In the final race, he finished second again which would have given him silver, but he was disqualified for a lane infringement.
Esterhuizen meanwhile, could not repeat his massive first-stage 77.69 metres first throw and had to be content with eighth thanks to a best effort of 65.59m in the second and decisive round of competition.