Four runners learning to work together — real quick
● Even without Wayde van Niekerk and Thando Roto, South Africa’s 4x100m relay team can win gold at the Commonwealth Games in Australia next month.
The injured duo of Van Niekerk and Roto are two of the three fastest South Africans over 100m, but that’s no problem.
Step up Akani Simbine (SA 100m recordholder), Clarence Munyai (200m recordholder), Anaso Jobodwana (200m bronze medallist at the 2015 world championships), Henricho Bruintjies (sub-10-second 100m runner) and Emile Erasmus (10.08sec best).
“Because of the depth of sprinting in South Africa, the team we’ve put out there is going to be flipping strong,” says Mathew Quinn, a member of SA’s world champion relay team from 2001.
“The guys are all running damn fast, so to be able to separate those guys ... we’re in a good space.
Practice makes perfect
“For me, I honestly believe the only team that can compete against us is England, but the thing they’ve got above us is that they have relay camps.”
Quinn’s concern is that the SA team, which departs next weekend, hasn’t started practising change-overs — one thing his team did before leaving SA. “That’s a gold we’re actually not preparing for.
“When you think about sprinting nations, it’s Jamaica, America, Great Britain . . . and the reason we think that is because they win [relay] medals at championships, but we’ve got better athletes.”
Jukka Harkonen, Caster Semenya’s Finnish agent, agrees. “The 4x1 is teamwork so even the teams like Germany, Japan, they can run 37-close.”
Athletics SA CEO Richard Stander, however, believes they will have sufficient time in Gold Coast to perfect the handovers.
Without much practice the SA team set the 38.35sec SA record as they finished fourth at the last Commonwealth showpiece, but they dropped the baton at the world championships the following year.
Quinn believes the 2018 team is far more talented than the 2001 edition, which also included Lee-Roy Newton, Corne du Plessis and Morne Nagel.
“Originally our goal was just to make the final, four okes just wanted to make the final. We got into the final, we got lane eight, we just said ‘guys, let’s go make it happen’ — and it was perfect.”