Grant Shimmin olympics For a country that produced one of the earliest 100m champions at the modern Olympics – Reggie Walker in London in 1908 – and numerous finalists in the period before World War II, the cupboard has been pretty bare in recent years as far as the blue riband event of the games is concerned. In fact, when Mathew Quinn steps on to the track for his first-round heat in Sydney, he’ll be the first South African man to contest the short sprint at an Olympics since our readmission to the international fold. That’s an achievement in itself, but the Pinetown ace hopes it’s just a stepping stone on the way to his ultimate goal, Athens in 2004. Not that Sydney isn’t significant. In fact, it’s the culmination of a three-year plan that was to have included the 1998 Commonwealth Games, last year’s world championships and next month’s Olympics. Unfortunately, the first of those goals didn’t materialise after a domestic season in which Quinn had really set out his stall for the first time, dominating the event on the home front. He wasn’t about to let the setback stop him, however. “That winter I trained harder and pushed myself further,” he says. As a result, the second goal did come about, after Quinn came within two-hundredths of a second of Johan Rossouw’s long-standing national record of 10,06 seconds. In Seville, he couldn’t quite repeat the times at home, making the second round, but going out with a fourth place in 10,24 in a generally forgettable championship for the South African team.
So it’s not surprising there was a fair bit of nervousness in the Quinn camp when the track and field component of the Sydney travelling party was announced on August 16. Having run a good coastal time of 10,19 in Cape Town in March, Quinn had then fulfilled the Athletics South Africa (ASA) requirement of making the standard of 10,25 seconds in the run-up to the games to prove his fitness. But his 10,23 looked a little unconvincing given the National Olympic Committee of South Africa’s (Nocsa) desire to pick athletes who could get to the semifinals of their events. “I don’t think there was a minute that went by that we didn’t worry about that,” says Quinn’s coach, Marc Labuschagne. “When we went along to the live feed of the team announcement, we were both very nervous.” The team was announced in Johannesburg, but various centres, including Durban, were linked to Nocsa’s headquarters for a teleconference.
Fortunately for Quinn, the questions the Durban media had to put to him afterwards centred on elation rather than deflation, as every athlete who had made the ASA standard in the prescribed period was given the nod to travel down under.
“I had been in contact with ASA and told them that I refused to bring Mathew into 10,15 shape eight weeks before the games,” explains Labuschagne, who says his 24-year-old charge is in “the best shape of his career”. “Looking at the qualifying standard, I told them, ‘We’ll qualify him and you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll run faster in Sydney.’ “If he gets the races, I can tell you Mathew will run 10,10,” adds Labuschagne, who is desperately hoping Quinn will be able to run in meets in Sydney and Brisbane, and possibly even one scheduled for Yokohama, Japan, in the build-up to the track and field programme. With 11 first-round heats scheduled, Labuschagne quite rightly points out that the 100m is the “most competitive event at the Olympics” and that the kind of time required to make the last 16 would be the equivalent of the sort of time that would make the final in other events. Nevertheless, the semi is down as Quinn’s “dream goal”. “I know I’ll have to go out there and run each round as a final. There’s no way I can cruise like some of the top guys,” he says. With cost keeping Labuschagne, the man behind a burgeoning “sprint house” in Durban, from getting to Sydney himself, Quinn is fortunate that girlfriend Heide Seyerling will also be making the trip, setting the seal on a superb year in which she moved up to the 400m from the shorter sprints. It’s a comfort to their coach that the pair each know what he requires of the other in training and they will thus be able to monitor each other’s progress in the build-up, with regular feedback to Labuschagne. In the case of Seyerling, Labuschagne says he sets “very, very specific goals” in training. “I have explicit times and splits for her to run at.” Quinn knows what those are. For Seyerling, also 24, the move to Durban has been a major tonic. She seemed to have lost her way somewhat after winning the world junior title in the 200m in Lisbon six years ago, but in a professional training environment, with her focus now firmly on the one-lap event, Labuschagne envisages big things for her. “We’re looking for a final place,” he says. “That might mean she has to take half a second off her personal best [50,91] in the semifinal, which is a big ask, but I’m quietly confident.” What remains to be seen is how well Seyerling can put it into practice in what is bound to be an intimidating environment. To that end, though, she could be helped by the fact that the partisan Aussie crowd will have eyes for only one runner, world champion Cathy Freeman. It won’t be easy for Labuschagne to bid farewell to the sprint sweethearts when they head for the South African team’s holding camp at Esselen Park outside Johannesburg on Wednesday. But at least he’ll know his instructions are firm in their minds and they have each other to lean on.