Advice and inspiration from two previous Olympic champions helped Hezekial Sepeng to a stunning silver medal in the 800m in Atlanta
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew
HEZEKIAL SEPENG’S success in Atlanta and the rave reviews he is now receiving provide a stark contrast to the response his performances drew last year and serve to underline just how fickle top class athletics can be.
It was only last summer after all that Athletics South Africa (ASA) president Leonard Chuene growled grumpily that Sepeng’s head was too big to fit through the door. And throughout 1995 Sepeng was exposed to continual hounding from certain sections of the media, firstly because he didn’t break the 24-year-old national record every time he laced up his spikes in South Africa, and also because he failed by the narrowest of margins to qualify for the world championships 800m final in Gothenburg. This year, however, Sepeng kept a low profile and put in the necessary groundwork to do the business when it really counted.
That groundwork was laid in a new environment in Johannesburg after moving from Potchefstroom last October and with a perfect training group which included teammate Johan Botha and British Olympian David Strang.
“The three of them were a perfect combination,” says Sepeng’s coach since he started out in athletics, JP Van der Merwe. “Johan had speed and David endurance because of his 1 500m background and the training sessions they were doing were superb.”
Equally important for Sepeng though was the change he made in the structure of his training programme for Atlanta which came about as a result of a book given to him by another British athlete training at his Rand Afrikaans University club. Barry Durn gave him a copy of Running for Glory by Peter Snell of New Zealand who won the 800m at the 1960 and 1964 Olympics along with the 1 500m on the second occasion. The book explained the training methods of Snell’s legendary coach Arthur Lydiand and his emphasis on endurance training.
With encouragement, Sepeng started doing long runs once again to build up his stamina. “Hezekial was never fond of long runs. When he stayed at the school hostel in Potch I used to drop him off 7km away every morning to make sure he did them, but once he moved into his house he stopped doing them,” says Van der Merwe.
Accustomed to the relentlessly flat landscape of Potchefstroom, Sepeng hated running in the hilly surrounds of his new home in Auckland Park, but he got used to it and was soon running 40 minutes a day during his winter programme with weekend runs of up to two hours.
The crucial factor in Sepeng’s success though was that he focused his training and performances on Atlanta rather than the domestic season. Sepeng tapered down to race only twice during the local athletics season, mainly to get a qualifying mark due to unclear signals from ASA.
In the second of those races he ran a personal best of 1:44.96, a remarkable performance considering that he did no specific training to sharpen up and didn’t veer away from his endurance base.
It was the clearest indication possible that Sepeng was right on target for the Olympics but again the media thought he was not up to scratch whenMarius van Heerden beat him to the South African record in April.
Van der Merwe was not concerned though and just before they left for Europe at the beginning of June Sepeng did a training session on the track which convinced him that he was in great shape. “I knew then that Hezekial was ready for a very fast time,” he says.
An injury scare after his first race in Estonia was followed by a steady improvement leading up to his main European race in Oslo. But Sepeng travelled to the South African Olympic training camp in LaGrange bitterly disappointed after his Oslo entry fell through at the last moment.
He was desparate for the chance to produce the fast time his training sessions showed he was capable of and his frustration was increased when he saw that Kipketer and Rodal both went under 1:43 in Oslo. When he arrived in LaGrange, somebody pointed out an old man sitting in a canteen. It was Mal Whitfield the 1948 and 1952 Olympic 800m champion, who spent over 40 years in Africa as a United States sports ambassador and discovered many of Africa’s great runners.
Sepeng went to talk to Whitfield and the old man took an immediate interest in him. A few days later he called Sepeng out to his car and showed him his 1952 gold medal. “He rubbed the medal all over me for luck and then said he would come and watch me train later that day,” says Sepeng
When Whitfield arrived at the track he watched for a while and then called Sepeng over. “He told me my left arm was moving sideways when I was sprinting and said I must practice my arm action in front of the mirror when I got back to my room.”
That weekend Sepeng went to the Gold Rush track and field meet in North Carolina for his last warm-up race before the Games. He went into the race treating it as an Olympic heat.
He was only concerned with winning. In the field were Johnny Gray and Einars Tupuntis of Latvia who had won the American collegiate title earlier in the year. After a relatively slow first lap of 51.35 Sepeng was handily placed behind them as they hit the home straight. “I was afraid I was going to get spiked so I slowed down a bit and moved out ot the third lane. Then I kicked and concentrated on my left arm action, pumping it all the way. I just ran through the line without looking at the clock as I normally do in South Africa,” says Sepeng.
It was an emphatic victory but the real bonus was his time of 1:43.47. That made him the third fastest in the world over 800m and boosted his confidence at just the right time. The rest is history.
Perhaps the most important thing about Sepeng’s superb performance in Atlanta though is the effect it will have on middle distance running in South Africa. There is a huge reservoir of untapped talent in this country which is just waiting to be unleashed.
John Velzian, the coach who got Kenya’s awesome running machine up and running, said last year: “Athletics in South Africa is just waiting for a spark which will light the fuse and lead to an explosion. Hezekial Sepeng in Atlanta might be that spark.” Propetic words indeed.