Nel, Van Niekerk fly the South Africa flag

WENDA NEL 400-metre hurdles) and Wayde van Niekerk (400m) are the first South African athletes to qualify for finals at the World Championships in Beijing.

The fact that Van Niekerk is through comes as no surprise.

He has been one of the dominant runners over 400 metres throughout the season. He is also one of only five athletes able to run a time of faster than 44 seconds this season.

His semi-final winning time of 44.31 was the fourth fastest of the day yesterday, behind Isaac Makwala (44.11); Kirani James (44.16) and Lugelo Santos (44.26).

There can be no arguing that Van Niekerk is the South African athlete with the most realistic chance of medalling in Beijing.

With his victories at the New York, Paris and London Diamond League meetings, he proved that he has big-match temperament.

In contrast to this, the fact that Nel, pictured, qualified for the final can be ascribed to pure guts and dedication. Her rise to becoming a world-class hurdler has been a three-year long work in progress.

In 2013 her season’s best time was only 55.80 and she was ranked 39th on the IAAF list. Last year she ran a new personal best time of 54.82 seconds, improving her ranking to 13th.

This season she has become ‘Miss Consistency’. She improved her best time to 54.37 seconds to become one of the 10 fastest hur- dlers in the world for 2015. Myrtle Bothma (53.74 in 1986) and Surita Febbraio (54.05 in 2003) are the only two South Africans who have been able to run faster times.

An interesting aspect of the Tuks/HPC athlete’s performance this season is that she was able to run times faster than 55 seconds on six occasions. Last year she was able to do it three times.

Of the 11 400-hurdles races in which she competed this season she won five, was second twice and third once.

Her worst finishes were fifth places at the Diamond League meetings in London, Paris and Stockholm.

Nel had her work cut out in her semi-final. At the second-last hurdle it was still a toss-up between her and Britain’s Eilidh Child as to who was going to finish second to qualify automatically for the final. Somehow Nel was able to find that something special that enabled her to pass the British runner. Cassandra Tate (US) won the semifinal in 54.33, with Nel second in 54.63 and Child third in 54.80.

After the race an elated Nel said that it has been her goal all along to qualify for the final.

“I knew it was not going to be easy, but all the hard work of the past few years have at long last paid off,” she said.

Carina Horn put in a credible performance in the 100 metres semi-final. She ran a time of 11.15sec, but unfortunately it was not good enough to qualify for the final. However, seen from a South African point of view, her performance was encouraging. It has been years since a South African female sprinter has been able to consistently run times faster than 11.20.

He was South Africa’s only medallist at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but a return to the same city failed to bring any joy to long jumper Khotso Mokoena yesterday, reports

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Mokoena and fellow long jumpers Zarck Visser and Ruswahl Samaai (Commonwealth long jump silver and bronze medallists) did not make it through to the final in a disappointing morning for this discipline, with none of them able to break the 8m mark.

Visser, racing against time after coming back from an ankle injury, was in the A group and registered 7.79m with his second jump and 7.78m with his third and final attempt but that was only good enough for eighth spot.

Group B saw American Jeff Henderson top the standings (8.36m) with an 8.25m effort from Olympic champion Greg Rutherford. Mokoena had one legal jump of 7.98 and Samaai had efforts of 7.68, 7.79 and 7.69.That put them ninth and 12th respectively in their group.

The summary of the two groups meant Mokoena was 13th overall, one spot away from qualifying while Visser and Samaai slotted in at 19th and 20th among 28 jumpers.