Women swimmers in titanic battles
● Dune Coetzee last night won the first of several titanic battles expected at the SA short course championships in Pietermaritzburg, taking the women’s 400m freestyle with a late surge.
Organisers used a timed-finals format, but the event came down to the packed final heat where the matric pupil went head-tohead against Tatjana Schoenmaker, Aimee Canny and Rebecca Meder.
For the first 200m there was almost nothing between the top three, with Coetzee, Meder and Canny separated by 0.16sec at the halfway mark.
Schoenmaker trailed the trio slightly.
But that’s when Coetzee started pushing and with 100m to go she had a clear lead, touching in 4min 07.95sec.
Schoenmaker took second
Schoenmaker, also with a strong finish, took second place in 4:09.33 ahead of Canny (4:09.90 and Meder (4:10.52).
The 200m freestyle and 200m individual medley contests later in the gala, which ends on Tuesday, are likely to be even tougher, with Erin Gallagher set to join the mix.
The women are taking top billing at this event, the first national pool competition this year after the cancellation of the long-course championships because of Covid-19, and not just because Chad Le Clos and the US-based contingent are overseas.
“Our women’s swimming is strong this year,” said SA head coach Graham Hill.
That’s a far cry from four years ago when not a single woman qualified for the Rio Olympics. Now he’s counting potential for the delayed Tokyo showpiece next year as well as the 2024 Paris Games.
Schoenmaker, the 200m breaststroke world championship silver medallist, is the highest-ranked swimmer in action at the GC Joliffe swimming pool.
But Hill believes she, Meder, Canny, Coetzee and Gallagher could produce a powerful 4x200m freestyle relay combination capable of making the final in Japan.
And don’t forget Kaylene Corbett, who set a few Olympic qualification times in the 200m breaststroke last year.
Grade 11 pupil Matthew Sates showed there’s also new talent among the men as he dominated the 400m freestyle.
He led from the start to win in an impressive 3:43.55, inside the 3:44.09 qualifying standard for next year’s world short course championships.
The 17-year-old, who has entered 10 events here, clocked his first qualifier in the 100m butterfly at a district gala recently.
But he insisted he doesn’t swim for times. “I like to race. I believe if you swim to race then the good times will come.”
Sates, whose main focus is the individual medley, is versatile and could even fit into an SA men’s 4x100m freestyle relay, which has been dormant for eight years.