Is 100m record at risk in Akani’s tit-for-tat battle with Henricho?
A SHOWDOWNbetween the two fastest men in South Africa is set for Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria on Saturday.
Tuks athlete Akani Simbine, who set a new national 100m record of 9.96 seconds at the same venue on Tuesday evening, is slated to get down into the blocks along with Henricho Bruintjies, the man he shared the fastest time with until two days ago. Both athletes ran 9.97sec last year.
Adding a bit of spice to the encounter is the fact that Bruintjies, from Klapmuts, recently joined Simbine’s training group in Pretoria.
The pair have had a few sessions together, and Saturday will see the next episode in the tit-fortat battle between them. In the Slovenian city of Velenje in July last year, Simbine, pictured right, blitzed to a time of 9.99sec before Bruintjies, pictured far right, broke Simon Magakwe’s then SA record of 9.98sec by 0.01sec in La Chauxde-Fonds, Switzerland, in the same month.
As it turned out, Bruintjies was the sole record-holder for only four days before Simbine equalled his time to win the world student title in South Korea.
Simbine is only in the early stages of his preparations for the Rio Olympic Games, and there is still plenty of work for him before his season starts in earnest.
“We weren’t planning on racing in the meet, we would have start- ed with the Gauteng North Championships this weekend but that is just how things pan out,” said his elated coach Werner Prinsloo.
“The random meetings tend to produce the best results, and to run that kind of time in his first race (on Tuesday) is unbelievable.
“(Akani) has a way of surprising me, this was the second time he has done that, the first time was when he ran 10.19 as a junior.”
Prinsloo and Simbine said setting a world-leading time this early in the season would not undermine the preparations and programme they had planned for the year.
His performance in Pretoria was his third sub-10 second time and equalled Namibian Frankie Fredericks 9.96sec in Joburg in 1998.
Prinsloo added: “It looks like (Akani) is comfortable running sub-10 seconds, so I think this is the kind of time we can expect from him, but I don’t want to make predictions.
“We are not chasing times, if they come it is a bonus, but there are other milestones we want to achieve before looking at times.
“The big goal is the Olympics where he is looking to book a place in the final.”
Simbine’s 9.97 in Korea was run at sea-level, and he would like to repeat the feat at the SA Senior Championships in Stellenbosch next month.
“My 9.97 was at sea level with no wind, so I am pretty confident that if my plans for me to be in that shape at that time (are on course), I can do it,” he said.