MICHAEL FINCH, Johannesburg | Monday 9.30am.
SOUTH Africa pulled off a clean sweep of the swimming medals on the second day of the 7th All Africa Games on Sunday, but amazingly dropped to second on the overall medal table.
Led by world record holder Penny Heyns, the hosts finished first and second in every one of the individual swimming events and then won the 4x200m men’s freestyle relay.
Unfortunately, what South Africa were doing in the pool, Nigeria were doing in the weightlifting arena where they picked up a massive nine gold medal haul to launch themselves above the defending Africa Games champions in the overall gold medal count.
But there’s no need to panic just yet.
There are still five days left in the swimming and South Africa will clean up there, while the weightlifting is all over by Tuesday.
Without doubt the star of South Africa’s show on Sunday was Heyns. The
triple world record holder and double Olympic champion, who along with Australian Ian Thorpe is arguably the world’s top swimmer, made short work of the women’s 200m breaststroke clocking a Games record of 2:28.00.
By Heyns’ standards the time was slow compared to her Pan Pacifics world record of 2:23.64, but that was hardly on her mind.
“I’m just glad it’s over,” the Amanzimtoti native said. “This was one race that I was worried about because anything can happen at altitude.”
Sarah Poewe, who took bronze behind Heyns at the Pan Pacs earlier this year and is herself ranked among the top three in the world, finished second in 2:32.80, but admittedly was bothered by a painful shoulder.
As for the rest of the swimmers, Ryan Kelly caused a minor upset when he beat African record holder Theo Verster in the 100m butterfly; Terence Parkin lived up to his number one ranked billing to win the 400m Individual medley ahead of Adrian Bosch, while Kim van Selm and Kirsten van Heerden took the top two places in the women’s 200m freestyle ahead of top ranked Egyptian Rania Elwany.
The only other result of note came in the women’s hockey competition, which has been reduced to an exhibition sport after the withdrawal of Nigeria left just four teams in the running.
South Africa, ranked among the top six in the world, continued their dominance by beating neighbours Namibia 7-0.
There was also good news for 56kg Willem Phillips, who broke a South Africa record in the snatch with a total of 95.01kg. — MWP