Being named Female Prospect of the Year is just the beginning for young sprinter Heide Seyerling
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew
THE organisers of the 1992 Engen Powerplus Summer Series faced something of a quandry when it came to the second meeting of the series to inaugurate the new synthetic track at Jan Smuts Stadium in East London.
Olympic 200m champion Gwen Torrence had been flown in from the United States to accompany Britain’s Steve Cram as the main international crowdpullers. Torrence was down to run the 100m but she was in danger of having to race against herself.
South Africa’s top women sprinters were not available. Marcel Winkler was sidelined with a liver disorder, Elinda Vorster had not yet started competing and Evette de Klerk, on the comeback trail after a long and serious injury, resisted Track and Field co-chairman Danie Malan’s bullying and chose to run the less explosive 400m instead.
A hastily assembled field of five eventually went under starter’s orders for the 100m on that blustery December afternoon. Although an overweight Torrence went through the motions to win in a slow 12.03 seconds, it was a 16-year-old Port Elizabeth schoolgirl who made the most of the occasion to finish a not so distant second to the Olympic champion.
In the little over two years since that day in East London, Heide Seyerling has blossomed beyond all expectations to become this country’s most promising woman athlete since Elana Meyer started setting the tracks on fire in 1991.
This week she received acknowledgement of that fact when she won Athletics South Africa’s Female Prospect of the Year award at a function in Johannesburg. Seyerling first started making waves as a sprightly 14- year-old in 1991 when she made it into the final of the girls under-17 200m at the South African junior championships in Germiston.
By the following year she had improved to take silver over 200m and bronze over 100m and was ranked first at 200m in the under-17 age group. Then came her clash with Torrence which she repeated a few days later in Mossel Bay. She struck up a friendship with the glamorous American and promised to write but shyness got the better of her.
“I always wanted to write to her but I only got round to it recently,” says Seyerling. Torrence will be surprised to learn that the young girl she gave encouragement to two years ago is now the world junior champion. That title came in Lisbon last year when she was one of the few track athletes in the South African squad of 20 to peak at the world junior championships. It was clear she was in good form when she lowered her personal best three times on the way to the semifinal of the 100m, an event she pursues mainly to sharpen her speed for her favoured half lap event.
Her form was ominous as she powered her way to the final of the 200m with the fastest times of both the second round and semifinals. She lined up in lane three with her two main rivals, Astia Walker of Jamaica and Lakeisha Backus of the United States, clearly in her sights in the two lanes immediately outside her.
“I was very nervous but as soon as I got out of the blocks I felt great,” she said. “When I came to the straight I just told myself to relax. I prayed and said thank you to God and he helped me through,” revealed Seyerling. Whether it was divine intervention on her behalf we shall never know but Seyerling certainly showed the mettle of a true champion when she hit the home straight.
Slightly down on her two rivals outside her as she came off the bend she dug deep to pull ahead and hold off a desperate late charge from Backus. Her reward was a superb time of 22.80 seconds but unfortunately the wind reading of 2,2m per second (slightly over the legal limit of 2m/s) meant it will not stand for record purposes. It was faster than the championship record of 23.10 set by Britain’s Diana Smith in 1990 and it is probably the equal of Evette de Klerk’s 11-year-old national junior record of 22.76 set at altitude.
Besides Seyerling’s undeniable talent, credit for her win must also go to her coaches. Former star sprinter Maryke Doubell’s husband Chris managed what few others did when their charge produced the best performance of her season so long after hitting her first peak three- and-a-half months earlier at the national junior championships where she won both the 100m and 200m.
Lamentably the Doubells’ thorough preparation was not present on the tour to Lisbon and the complaints of lack of practise from the relay squad members was confirmed when an almost certain medal disappeared on the first change of the women’s 4x100m final. Esmari le Roux fumbled the baton exchange from Tammy Sawyer and South Africa were eventually disqualified.
Seyerling will probably get many more chances to win medals but that may not be the case for the rest of her team-mates in the relay.
Seyerling was, in the words of Paul Simon, born at the right time — unlike her role model as she was growing up. Evette de Klerk, the erstwhile queen of the sprints, who never got the chance to prove her undoubted abilities on the world stage. That was something the young Seyerling was already thinking about as she rose through the ranks in the boycott years.
“My father is Dutch and I was going to move and compete for Holland if things didn’t change here,” says Seyerling. But the end of the sports boycott came just in time and Holland lost a future champion. The only other member of the Seyerling children to have a Dutch christian name is also a sports star. Older brother Hein (23) is mentally impaired but has competed with distinction in the high jump, establishing a world best at a meeting in the Orange Free State last year. “He has always been an inspiration to me,” says Seyerling.
“This year I want to defend my junior titles because it will be my last year as a junior and I want to improve my personal bests,” declares Seyerling . “I will also try for Gothenburg (the world championships) but I’m still young and the Atlanta Olympics next year is my real goal.”
Surprisingly she is not in the athletics squad for Nocsa’s Operation Excellence, but hopefully that will soon change. This week’s visit to Johannesburg gave Seyerling a break from coaching her former school mates at Framesby High School in Port Elizabeth where she is standing in for the school’s athletics coach, Magda Botha, who is on a two week coaching course in Johannesburg.