Godfrey Khotso Mokoena added a gold medal in the triple jump to his long-jump silver at the 10th IAAF World Junior Athletics Championships in Grosseto, Italy, on Sunday.
That brought South Africa’s medal tally to six — two gold and four silver — which saw the country placed joint fifth behind the United States, Russia, Kenya and Belarus.
The 19-year-old Mokoena lived up to his reputation as one of South Africa’s best juniors of all time. In the long jump he set an South African record of 8,09m while his winning triple jump measured a solid 16,77m, 19cm below his personal best.
It was clear that the tough battle in the long jump had taken a lot out of his legs for the strenuous demands of the triple-jump final. He succeeded in winning medals in both jumps, while most athletes would not even consider entering both events.
The other gold medallist was Justine Robbeson — like Mokoena, also from Nigel — in the heptathlon.
In the final event, the 4 x 400m relay, the South African quartet of Ruan Grobler, Chris Gebhardt, Leigh Julius and LJ van Zyl ran very well to finish behind the powerful US team, who set one of their country’s three world records in the relays.
For the second day running the South African relay squad broke the Africa junior records with a very fast three minutes and 4,5 seconds. This time registered the sixth-fastest to date by a junior team in the world.
For Julius it was a second silver medal at the meeting — the other was in the 200m — while Lohan Rautenbach added the fourth with a very good performance in the javelin event. The six-medal haul was only one less than the record of the 2000 South African junior team in Chile.
In the final of the women’s 1 500m, Nicolene van Rooyen did very well to finish in sixth place, clocking four minutes and 19,39 seconds, which was only about three seconds behind the winner.
In the 5 000m final Zolani Bhitane of South Africa did not finish the race. — Sapa