Back track on Wayde makes his longawaited return, winning the Free State champs at a canter
World record holder eases to a 400m comeback victory
● The only lightning visible at Bloemfontein’s athletics stadium yesterday shot down from the thick clouds, but the way Wayde van Niekerk cantered around the track suggested he really is over his rightknee injury.
The Olympic 400m champion hasn’t competed internationally since the 2017 world championships after collapsing during a game of touch rugby.
Surgery and more than two years of rehabilitation have followed, and the world title he had won at Beijing 2015 and London 2017 went to the Bahamas on the head of Steve Gardiner without a fight last year.
But now he’s back and ready to fight. After yesterday’s race Van Niekerk’s coach, Tannie Ans Botha, said her star athlete had plenty more speed in the tank.
Van Niekerk’s 47.42sec was way off his 43.03 world record, but it’s comfortably in his ballpark for 400m season-openers. His fastest, in 2016, was 47.26.
Botha studied a video of the race on her phone, pointing out how easy he had gone, pushing only on the top bend.
“He could have done a 45,” she said. “Look, he stops running 15 or 20 metres from the line… Some people have to run so darn hard to get 47, but he just jogs,” she added with a laugh.
Botha, tucked into a winter jacket and wearing a blanket over her legs, insisted there was no way Van Niekerk could have opened up the throttle in the cold wind that accompanied the grumpy skies.
“I’m happy. In this weather you can’t push. If he did he would have put himself at risk. If the weather was different you would have seen something different.”
Last year Van Niekerk aborted the national championships in Germiston because of chilly conditions.
Yesterday morning he saw the conditions and braced himself.
“I woke up and saw it was cold, built up a few nerves, but I set my mind up to just get into it,” Van Niekerk said. “The first few steps already I could feel I’m very sluggish and very tight.”
He said he had already picked up a bagful of confidence from his two races last weekend, where he went 10.1sec in the 100m and 20.31sec over the 200m. The weather had been much warmer.
“My goal last week was a 10.5 and 20.5, it’s no secret that I want to touch the 43s and 42s [in the 400m].
“Only performances will allow me to build a confidence or a comfort in getting my stride back and getting my mentality to running not just good times, but the best times in the world.”
Van Niekerk, unbeaten over 400m since 2016, is prepared to taste defeat on the comeback trail. “[There’s] still a lot of work to be done before I can compete against the world’s best. Win or lose I need to expose myself to that competition so I can get myself to the level I know I should be at.”
Fighting back from injury is nothing new for Van Niekerk, who joined Botha as a teenager with a serious hamstring issue, which triggered other problems, including in the lower back.
They’re still an issue, but the knee injury has put them into perspective.
“It just shows you it can be a mindset issue. If I think back to what I was crying about in Rio and world champs, it’s not that much of a major issue anymore … I’m not one who shies down from any pains.”