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Daniel Mothowagae reflects on a track and field season that saw new sprint records being set
South African sprinters were among a handful of athletes who held their own against their Jamaican and North American rivals this year.
In Wayde van Niekerk, Anaso Jobodwana, Akani Simbine and Henricho Bruintjies, domestic athletics prided itself on its turbocharged sprinters this season.
When former 100m record holder Simon Magakwe was banned in April for missing a doping test, his two-year suspension from the track opened up a window for new local talent to attack the 9.98-second mark he had set 12 months prior to his ban.
Simbine and Bruintjies – who finished behind Magakwe during the record-setting race in April 2014 – had the potential to produce further sub-10-second performances.
Amid high expectations at this year’s SA Senior Track and Field Championships in April, no sprint records were set, despite Van Niekerk, Simbine and Jobodwana all snatching national titles in fiercely contested finals.
That changed when the group ventured on to the European circuit, as they brought home three sub-10-second sprints in the 100m, two sub-20s in the 200m and two sub-44 runs in the 400m.
On July 5, South Africans woke up to the news of a new 100m record: Bruintjies had shaved 0.01 seconds off Magakwe’s mark, with a 9.97-second run at a meeting in Switzerland.
But it was Simbine who came close to smashing the South African record following a 9.99-second performance at a European Permit meeting four days earlier, the same race in which Bruintjies came second in 10.15 seconds.
Simbine nonetheless equalled the 9.97 mark with a gold medal victory at the World Student Games in Gwangju, South Korea, on July 9.
During the same month, Van Niekerk clocked 19.94 seconds at a different meeting in Switzerland, the first South African to dip below 20 seconds in the 200m dash.
The feat came two weeks after the 23-year-old became the first African to run a sub-44 second time in the 400m.
Van Niekerk – voted South African Sport Star of the Year, Sportsman of the Year and People’s Choice winner last month – also bettered his personal record in the 400m on three occasions in the season when he claimed the scalps of the top-rated LaShawn Merritt (US) and Kirani James (Grenada).
He set a 44.24 mark in New York in June; 43.96 at the Paris Diamond League in July; and 43.48 (also an African record), which won him a gold medal at
the IAAF World Championships in August.
Jobodwana (23) was consistent over the 200m this year.
He capped his season with a new South African record time of 19.87 seconds when he bagged a bronze behind champion Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin in the final of the Beijing global championships in August.
Jobodwana also came close to winning the lucrative Diamond League but lost the big prize to Alonso Edward of Panama by five points.
There was also a revolution in the women’s sprints when Carina Horn (26) equalled Evette de Klerk’s 25-year national record time of 11.06 seconds. Her time was the fastest by a South African athlete at sea level.
