Meyer masters Midmar Mile
Ho misses out on eighth-straight win, American Twichell wins her third women’s race
ANEW name will be inscribed on the list of the men’s 14 to 30 years race winners of the annual Midmar Mile, the world’s largest open water event which celebrated its 44th year at the popular KZN Midlands resort at the weekend.
It will be that of Matthew Meyer whose stunning victory over three other world class swimmers will send out a signal that he is about to become a force to be reckoned with in the longer freestyle races both in the pool and in open water.
Meyer, who turns 19 on March 4 and who was educated at Clifton College and was in the SA swim team at the Rio Olympics, turned in a well judged performance in yesterday’s Men’s Mile (1600m) no doubt with a lot of input from his swim coach and mentor, Alisdair Hatfield, of the Action Swim Academy in Durban North.
No less than five Hatfield-trained swimmers were among the first seven finishers with Ho and Meyer dedicated teammates and training partners over the past few years.
In the line-up against Meyer yesterday were defending title holder and seven-time consecutive winner of the race, Olympian Chad Ho, Rio Olympics 10km open swim gold medallist Ferry Weertman and American Chip Peterson from North Carolina, former World Championship 10km winner.
Weertman started out as the pre-race favourite having beaten Ho by five seconds to win the Olympic 10km gold medal in Rio last year, but it was Peterson who set the pace to the 400m mark as the foursome pulled away from the rest of the packed field in almost perfect conditions.
Weertman moved to the front at 800m and still held the advantage at the 1200m mark with just 400m left to swim.
With all four swimmers still in the frame it was Meyer who made the decisive break with about 200m left to swim followed by Ho, Peterson and Weertman.
Meyer dug deep to hold on to what proved to be an unassailable lead to win in 18 mins 13 sec with Ho five seconds behind him in 18:18 and Peterson third in 18:20 completing the po- dium places.
Weertman had to settle for fourth place in 18:26 with Tyrone Kruger fifth in 19:08, Luke Erwee sixth in 19:19 and Chad Michau seventh in 19:51.
Meyer, now studying accountancy at Varsity College, said after the race: “I’m elated! I’ve wanted to win the Midmar Mile ever since I first swam it when I was at school. “Then I came second the Chad (Ho) last year and the year before and finally today a dream has come true for me.”
Meyer said: “I went out really hard and managed to stay with the other three and I still had something in reserve at the finish even though it was one of the bumpiest open water swims I have ever swum.”
Meyer said his goals for the rest of the year were to win gold in the 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle events at the 2017 SA National Championships in Durban in April when he also hoped to qualify for these three events at the World Championships in Budapest in July.
Ho said: “I guess you could say I am happy and sad at the same time. Happy to have come second to Matt (Meyer) and sad to have missed out on an eighth straight first place in the Midmar Mile. I guess it was just not meant to be today.
“But I’ll be back, for sure, next year and there are the World Champs to look forward to later this year.”
The corresponding women’s race yesterday was won by American swimmer, Ashley Twichell, bringing her Midmar Mile title haul to three after victories in 2013 and 2014.
She won in the relatively slow time of 19:24, nearly two minutes off Keri-Anne Payne’s record for the course of 17:33.
Britain’s Holly Hibbott was runner-up for the second year running, this time in19:37, leaving Twichell a comfortable winner by 13 seconds.
Then came Robyn Kinghorn in 20:34 to complete the podium places, Charlise Oberholzer fourth in 20:39 and defending title-holder, Michelle Weber, fifth in 21:06.
Two Brits from the Sean Kelly stable filled sixth and seventh places respectively, Lucy McKenzie in 21:09 and Katie Matts in 21:19.