After a couple of years in the wilderness, Marius van Heerden is firmly back in the limelight after breaking the South African 800m record
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew
THREE years ago Marius van Heerden approached the new athletics season full of optimism. He was one of this country’s rising new stars who, the previous year, had raced neck and neck in the 800m with another promising junior, Hezekiel Sepeng, and finished sixth at the 1992 world junior championships in Seoul.
The world was at his feet it appeared, but then he vanished off the scene and was soon forgotten as Sepeng blazed to fifth place at the 1993 world championships and became a household name. People who still remembered Van Heerden thought he was just another one of those athletes who show promise as youngsters but never quite make it to the senior ranks.
But this year Van Heerden came storming back into the spotlight and two weeks ago broke the 25-year-old South African 800m record that everybody expected Sepeng to claim. Last Saturday he was named on the team for the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
But what exactly happened to him during those missing years? “I had a fairly good domestic season in 1993. I came second at SA champs and I ran 1:46.38 which was my personal best but then I started getting problems with my nose. Just before the under-19 team went to England in July I had to have an operation for sinus problems. I had two operations in a month and then another one about a month later. My nose was skew, I think it was frommy days playing rugby, and they had to open it up and straighten it out because I couldn’t breathe properly. It took me about five months to recover from that,” explains Van Heerden.
Without a proper winter’s training behind him he battled to get back to his old form in 1994, and he also changed his coach after the end of that season. He had moved at the end of 1992 from his home near Malmesbury to live in Cape Town. He was still being coached by his old school coach Schreuder Brand, but it was difficult because of the distance involved so he changed to his present coach, Tommy Tesnar.
Tesnar’s approach was quite different and it took time to adjust but at the end of last season Van Heerden managed to put in his first good winter programme and the results are now there for all to see.
Although Van Heerden admits to frustration during the trying times he never gave up hope. “It was difficult for the first two years after my operation and last year I couldn’t understand why my times didn’t improve when my training was going so well. The world championships qualifying time was 1:46.5 and my practice times told me I could do that, but every time I got into a race I was going great until the last 100m and then I just died. I simply didn’t have the strength because I had missed out on my winter training.”
Although Van Heerden may have been irritated with his lack of progress last year, Tesnar seemed to have an uncanny understanding of the talent just waiting to burst out of his young charge. “At the end of last year my coach told me I would run 1:44.5 before SA champs this year. I kind of wanted to believe him but I thought to myself, ‘Gee my personal best is only l:46.3!’ ”
This season though Tesnar has seemed more like a prophet than a coach. At the Weetbix meeting at Stellenbosch in February Van Heerden was down to run the mile. “My coach said, ‘Tonight you’re going to run 3:57’ and that’s exactly what I did. I thought maybe it was luck or something,” says Van Heerden. Then at his next races Tesnar told him he would run 2:17.5 for the 1 000m, which he duly did, and 1:45.5 for the 800m, which was also right on the nail. “Then I had to tell myself this guy really knows what he’s talking about,” says Van Heerden.
Right from the start of this year Van Heerden and Tesnar had been aiming to run a fast time at the Engen final in Cape Town because there were already three 800m runners in the preliminary Olympic training squad chosen last October. “I knew this year that if I wanted to get into the Olympic team I would have to take some of them out,” says Van Heerden.
There were few head-to-head opportunities, though, and Van Heerden therefore had to run a fast time. “For the two weeks before the Engen final I concentrated on my speed work and one week beforehand my coach told me I was going to run 1:44.5. He told me I must just dream it. So I started thinking and dreaming about the record.
“Before the race I was very calm and my target was to run 1:44.5. I was a bit behind at the bell and I had to work very hard on the last lap to stay with the pace. I just went for it and in the last five metres I was watching the clock and I lost my rhythm a little,” says Van Heerden. Waiting at the line was Tesnar who embraced his new South African record holder. The old mark that was set in 1971 by Dicky Bromberg and equalled two years later by Marcello Fiascanaro was 1:44.7. And Van Heerden’s time? It was 1:44.57!
So what does Tesnar think of his athlete’s chances at the Olympics? “He says I will reach the final,” says Van Heerden. Save some time to watch television on the evening of July 31. Marius van Heerden will be running in the Olympic 800m final!