Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
When Olympic gold medals were two a Penny
THE MID-1990s were heady times for South Africa, no less so than in the sporting arena.
And one of the celebrated stars of the period was swimmer Penelope “Penny” Heyns. She was the youngest member of the South African Olympic team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, the Games that marked South Africa’s re-admission to the Olympic fold after the long isolation of the apartheid years, and won a bronze medal in the 200m breaststroke event.
Four years later, she excelled herself at the Atlanta Games, becoming the only woman in the history of the Olympic Games to win both the 100m and 200m breaststroke events.
This is how it was reported at the time: races, crowning one of South Africa’s greatest moments in sporting history and elevating her country for the moment to 10th spot in the medals table.
The last South African to achieve double gold was Paul Winslow in 1912, who won the medals for singles and doubles tennis.
Heyns said: “Bringing home two gold medals is amazing, I don’t think I could be prouder to be a South African.
“Being the Olympic champion and hearing our national anthem was the best moment of my life. I came here with the purpose of doing my personal best. Winning a second gold medal and breaking the Olympic record was not in the script.”
The Amanzimtoti girl looked decidedly nervous before the start, but got out of the blocks second behind Australia’s Samantha Riley. Then Heyns took the bit between her teeth and led the race to the finish.
She was never seriously troubled in spite of the expected strong finishing kick by American Amanda Beard who was second in 2: 25.75. Hungary’s Agnes Kovacs was third in 2:26.57, with Riley a disappointing fourth in 2:27.91.
Silver medalist Beard said she had given it her all, but Heyns was too good.
“At the last 50m she was a little too far ahead of me,” said the tiny 14-year-old.
Heyns was almost a second quicker than her morning heat and she needed to be, as first Riley and then Beard tried to outsprint the Olympic cham- pion.
“I was dead tired. This is one of the hardest races I have ever swum. I’m just happy I hung in,” Heyns admitted.
The 1995 National Sportswoman of the year looked dumbfounded at the end as she turned and looked back to the electronic scoreboard.
It crowned a glorious 72 hours in which she became the first woman to win Olympic gold since Joan Harrison and Esther Brand 44 years ago at the 1952 Games in Helsinki.
There was a special moment at the end when Beard reached over the dividing rope and hugged and kissed Heyns.
As she left the pool, the 7 500 spectators at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Centre rose as one to salute a fine champion. CURIOSITY is seldom entirely innocent, and so much is certainly true of an extraordinary project of 1860, fleetingly recounted in the newspaper of July that year.
It emerges that among a certain Captain Dillingham’s collection of “African curiosities” for display and examination at a “scientific institution lately established at Boston” in the US were five men from southern Africa, “all fine specimens of their distinct races”.
The fuller, poignant and, in part, tragic, story of the five has been retold more recently in a compelling 2011 honours thesis by Matthew Smith Miller, fittingly titled “Surely his mother mourns for him: Africans on Exhibition in Boston and New York, 1860-1861”.
From this work, we learn that 35-year-old master mariner Captain John Dillingham “had been hired by… the proprietors of a well-respected local aquarium and museum, the Boston Aquarial and Zoological Gardens, to travel to South Africa and return with attractions for their establishment”.
He had succeeded: “in addition to a variety of plants and minerals and an “African tiger”, he had brought with him five South African men “fresh from savage life”, whom he had contracted to perform their “native customs” on stage.
From the start, the idea was that the five would be returned to their homes and hearths, and they were, except one.
The “Hottentot” Steaurma Jantjes stayed behind one evening when his compatriots went off to a church service hosted by a missionary who had once been stationed in southern Africa. Returning to their lodgings later, the four others found 17-year-old Jantjes had hanged himself (his body later being subjected to dissection, in the interest of scientific enquiry).
Steaurma’s death was the end of the “exhibition”, and the four others were soon despatched home on the Arabia. Here is how Cape readers learnt of the project as it unfolded: “July 21, 1860 Africans for America Capt. Dillingham, who lately arrived in this colony for African curiosities for a scientific institution lately established at Boston, US, has returned from the frontier, in the steamer Sir George Grey, bringing with him, in addition to a very large collection of mineral and vegetable curiosities, a Bushman, Kafir, Zulu, Hottentot, and Fingo, all fine specimens of their distinct races…
“Capt. Dillingham, who is highly pleased with the result of his visit, is of opinion that nothing ever introduced into America has excited more curiosity nor given more gratification to the professors of science than his collection will do on its arrival.”