World sprint champ runs into trouble

way into the ground. Arriving at the ground was like being transported back in time. I’d never experienced ‘The Boet’ with 31 000 packed in and the atmosphere was eerily uneasy; the kind you get when tensions start running high in a crowded venue and a fight is one look away.

Something was going to blow, but I didn’t think it would be the stadium lights, just a few minutes before kickoff. The crowd got frustrated and the brandy and coke brigade got belligerent. They wanted rugby, they wanted a fight and they wanted a big Springboks win.

It would take 45 minutes before they got their rugby and they got the biggest fight of the World Cup, which saw Snow, Rees and Dalton sent off after a free-for-all. They also got a 20-points Boks win, which in the context of the match, was a big victory.

The chaos that followed was unprecedented in my then brief rugby writing career. Pity my colleagues who had Sunday publication print deadlines. They could still sneak in the match report copy and news of Dalton’s red card, but for us daily beat reporters the story would be what followed.

We waited in the dungeons of ‘The Boet’ for the post-match press conference to follow, which was concluded at midnight. In another room, Dalton had already been trialed and just before 1am, we’d been told that he was suspended for 30 days and out of the World Cup.

We were also told that Hendriks had been cited but that his hearing would take place in Johannesburg on the Monday.

Christie and captain Francois Pienaar were angry, aggrieved at Dalton’s red card and fuming. They believed the Canadians had only come for an off-the-ball fight knowing they had nothing to lose but a game of rugby.

The Boks knew they would win the rugby, but in those early hours of the morning, in a deserted and dark Boet Erasmus, where it felt as if we worked under candlelight, you would have thought that the Boks had won nothing and the Canadians everything.

Given that we arrived back at the hotel at 3am, there wasn’t even time to test that theory with a post-match night on the town.

| Reuters

WOMEN’S 400m world champion Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain has been handed a provisional suspension for failing to make herself available for anti-doping tests, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said yesterday.

Naser won gold at the World Championships in Doha last year with a time of 48.14 seconds, the third fastest in history, to become the first Asian to claim the women’s 400m world title.

“The AIU has provisionally suspended Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain for whereabouts failures, a violation of the World Athletics Anti-doping Rules,” the AIU said in a statement

Naser, 22, was born in Nigeria before switching her allegiance to Bahrain in 2014.

According to World Athletics Anti-doping Rules, any combination of three missed tests or filing failures within a 12-month period by an athlete constitutes a whereabouts failure violation.

Athletes could face two-year bans or a minimum of one year depending on the degree of fault. | Reuters