Running, swimming and jumping for joy Malcolm Pringle brings talent and sheer joy to his medal-winning performances, writes Julian Drew
AS the surprise package in South Africa’s team at last year’s Paralympic Games in Atlanta, multiple medallist Malcolm Pringle was one of the star attractions at last week’s national championships for the physically disabled and visually impaired in Germiston.
For the meagre few who made the effort to go and watch South Africa’s Paralympic heroes in action, the 18-year-old Pringle did not disappoint with a one-man show of epic proportions. Starting his week on Monday with a gold medal performance in the Western Province hokker team – a kind of standing hockey for cerebral palsy athletes – Pringle moved up a gear on Wednesday morning to smash his own 800m world record set in Atlanta.
Not satisfied with making history on the track for a day’s work, Pringle returned that evening to the swimming pool where he helped himself to the South African junior record in the 50m backstroke and 100m freestyle events. He did the same again on Thursday in the 50m freestyle and 50m breaststroke before completing his medal blitz with a bronze in table tennis on Friday, succumbing more to his own impetuosity than anything his opponent could fling across the net at him.
As the winner from Transkei did a somersault next to the table Pringle could not conceal his disappointment before embracing him warmly. For if nothing else, Pringle is a supreme competitor and defeat is not something he takes lightly. “I don’t really play table tennis much. Like hokker I play just once a year at these championships so it’s alright if I don’t win I suppose,” said Pringle putting on a brave face.
“In hokker though we won all our matches and it was the first time we beat Gauteng in seven years so we were very happy with that.” It is athletics, however, which is his obvious forte but in swimming too he is beginning to make his mark. “I’ve only been swimming for a year and already I’ve got a Paralympic qualifying time. The swimming in Atlanta inspired me so much. Jean Jacques Terblanche and Craig Groenwald (Paralympic swimming medallists from Atlanta) can swim 60 seconds for 100m (freestyle) and I’m only 18 seconds behind them. I’ve gone from 1:27 to 1:18 in a year and I can hardly believe it,” said Pringle
It was his athletics coach Mike Cawood who started training him properly in swimming. Cawood is a full-time coach at the Peninsula Outdoor Sports Association (Posa) club which he started in 1989 and where Pringle has been running since 1992. One of the reasons for coaching his swimming was to help in the biathlon – Pringle has his Western Province colours in open competition against able-bodied athletes – but also to develop his overall physique.
Pringle is a right hemiplegic cerebral palsy – a muscular disability caused by lack of oxygen at or before birth – and has spastic muscles on the right side of his body. “In the swimming pool he works his upper body and develops different muscles to running although the kicking is good for his overall leg development,” said Cawood.
“His upper body has come along tremendously in the last couple of years. He used to be a skinny, pigeon chested individual but now the muscles are beginning to show quite nicely.” The inherent weakness in Pringle’s right arm has caused problems with his stroke but now Cawood has found the optimum solution for that.
“I don’t think we’ll ever get his right
arm as strong as his left arm. One of the biggest challenges in his swimming has been not to make his right arm swim faster but to slow his left arm down to match the speed of his right arm. By doing that he swims a more streamlined race and his times are now coming down,” said Cawood.
Besides running and swimming, an important part of his training is aerobics and gymnastics. “For flexibility and co- ordination, which in the case of a person like Malcolm is very important because of his co-ordination problem, we do aerobics. When he first started doing it he was in this room full of gorgeous girls and a couple of these macho guys and it was actually quite hilarious watching him doing some of the routines because he was so unco-ordinated.
“Now he completes the whole routine with aplomb. We also do a lot of gymnastics but with certain exercises I have to watch him because of his wonky right arm. The other week he was upside down in the rings and he came tumbling down because his right arm just gave in, but I was there to catch him. On the parallel bars I can’t catch him so I don’t let him do it,” said Cawood.
Although there are no major competitions to aim for this year Pringle is still improving as he matures and he was far from surprised with his 800m world record last week. “I’ve been training very hard for the last six weeks and I ran some races where my times were similar. So I knew I had a very good chance of breaking the record and I just went out there with a positive attitude,” said Pringle of the run which sliced more than a second off his Atlanta time of 2:06.78 for a new mark of 2:05.20.
Pringle in fact broke the 1 500m world record at a Western Province track and field league meeting at Bellville a month ago, chopping nearly five seconds off the time of Poland’s Andrzej Wrobel for a new record of 4:20.9 which is awaiting ratification.
Besides his amazing ability another entertaining aspect of Pringle’s performances are his sheer enthusiasm and displays of joy. One of the most memorable moments of the Paralympic Games came when Pringle ran to the television cameras after his 800m victory and, in a moment of spontaneous exuberance, blew a kiss to the watching world.
A clip of that moment was used over and over again in Atlanta during the highlights package of the Games and even featured in the closing ceremony along with the words to the Paralympic theme, “The Triumph of the Human Spirit.”
In fact Pringle’s celebrations became as much a feature of his running as his phenomenal success. In the 400m he leapt across the finish line like an excited spring lamb, so surprised was he with his silver medal. And, as he came down the finishing straight of the 800m, he was waving his arms in delight before delivering that impromptu kiss and embarking on a victory lap of theatrical proportions.
Only in his come-from-behind silver medal performance in the 1 500m did he leave out the merrymaking. “There was too much work to do,” said Pringle. Normally though he finds it difficult to contain his emotions. “I think what happens is that I get very motivated and then when I do something I’ve been wanting to do I just can’t help it. It’s an amazing feeling,” said Pringle.
There will be another opportunity to see Pringle’s incredible talents and effervescent personality when he competes at the South African biathlon championships in Worcester on Saturday. There he will be out to show his able-bodied counterparts that in the case of Malcolm Pringle and the Amakrokakroka the word disabled is something of a misnomer.
ENDS