South Africa has a few realistic Olympic medal hopes – but there could be some surprises
Grant Shimmin Angelo Taylor, a 21-year-old who hails from the previous Olympic host city, Atlanta, and is the fastest man in the world in the 400m hurdles this year, has a diary on the website shared by CNN and American magazine Sports Illustrated. In his latest instalment he described a tense battle with South Africa’s Llewellyn Herbert at the Van Damme Memorial meeting in Brussels on August 24, the penultimate stop on the Golden League schedule. Talking about the business end of the race, Taylor writes: “I tried to go 13 steps for the last nine hurdles (instead of my usual 13 steps to eight hurdles and 14 steps to the last two), and I couldn’t make it. So I had to chop down to 14 steps and I broke my momentum. That’s when Herbert went past me, and I had to go chase him down. Usually I have enough speed to catch another hurdler in the final, flat part of the race, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch Herbert this time. He ran a 48,30 and beat me by three-one-hundreths of a second. But hey, I didn’t dwell on it. I know what I did wrong and told myself I would correct it for the next race.” This could be dismissed as an excuse for a poor race, but don’t be too quick to dismiss Taylor, because the next race could well be the Olympic final and the stage is set for a dog-fight of epic proportions. The margin of Herbert’s victory in Brussels was the same as Taylor’s winning margin in their previous meeting in Zurich as the pair wrestled for the psychological high ground ahead of the Olympics. This is the kind of battle that awaits our best in Sydney. Herbert, the man who never faces forward before a race until the starter calls the athletes to their marks; who some see as “a bit of a show-off” who hates losing with a passion that has to be seen in the immediate aftermath of a defeat to be believed, is going to come up against Taylor and he’s got his work cut out for him, because Taylor is very, very good. Damn, it’s good to know one of our athletes is going to be involved in a head-to-head like that on the world’s biggest stage. And there are others in our class of 2000, and they face battles every bit as tough. Let’s be under no illusions. This is the Olympics and for those fortunate enough to belong to the Olympic codes, the hunger is greater than at any other event. Expect a lot of Penny Heyns, but don’t write her off as a has-been if she doesn’t return with two more golds. The opposition this time round is stronger, if anything, from precocious talents like Megan Quann, Masami Tanaka, Kristy Kowal and Agnes Kovacs, among other.
Going into these games Heyns is third in the 100m breaststroke and fifth on the 200m in the world rankings. The Olympics is a different story, though. She’s been there, done that and the others haven’t. And she happens to hold both world records. One of the greatest tussles awaits Brendon Dedekind and Roland Schoeman in the 50m freestyle. Two-time defending champion Alex Popov has moved the goalposts with his world record of 21,64 seconds and last month Gary Hall Jnr and college freshman Anthony Ervin both went well under 22 seconds at the United States trials. Doubts exist about whether they can hold their form right through to the Olympics, but Popov should be fresh and ready. Dedekind is a man with experience, though, and he’s clearly up for a titanic struggle. “It only excites me more to see these guys swimming so fast as now I know it is going to be the humdinger that everyone thinks it is going to be,” he said soon after the American trials. John-Laffnie de Jager, who is expected to challenge for a tennis medal in the men’s doubles alongside David Adams, endorses the theory of a tough battle, though he’s clear that he and Adams have “a definite shot at winning a medal”. “There are probably eight teams with a chance of winning it,” he said, throwing out names like the legendary Woodies, playing together for the last time before Mark Woodforde’s retirement. “A lot depends on the draw. If you take a pairing like [India’s] Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhuphathi, they haven’t been playing because of injury, so their ranking is low and they won’t be seeded. So a seeded pair could end up drawing them in the first round.”
It’s an oft-asked question: How many medals can South Africa win? And just about everybody can recite the old favourites: Herbert, Hezekiel Sepeng, Hestrie Cloete, Heyns, Dedekind, Ryk Neethling, Ruth Nortje, Adams, De Jager. There are more, but they’re not as obvious at first glance, and then there are those on the outside. Let’s remember that we’re talking about battles here, and in battles where everybody is throwing everything in, there can be unexpected results. I’m betting we’ll be on the right end of a few of those.
Take the women’s hockey side, which has worked its way steadily up to fifth in the world. They have, in Karen Roberts, an inspirational captain who is retiring after the games. They also have a world-class striker in Pietie Coetzee, who is set to play her 100th match in the opener against Germany on September 17. And they have the belief that they can come home with a medal.
“Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been talking about playing in the top four and winning a medal. We talk about it a lot and the more we believe it, the better it will go,” says Caryn Bentley, who will also win her 100th cap if South Africa make the second phase of the competition. I’m not too sure how many donkeys they have in Australia, but hopefully the team will talk the tails off a few kangaroos.