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Grant Shimmin in Sydney In a room in the Athletes’ Village adjacent to Sydney’s Olympic Park, there’s plenty of mutual encouragement going on. It’s a room shared by Brendon Dedekind and Ryk Neethling, two of the elder statesmen of the South African swimming team and, coincidentally, two of the biggest medal hopes.
They’ve been regular room-mates at major international events for some time now and clearly help to bring the best out in each other when it’s time to step on to the blocks.
On the face of it, it’s a slightly odd partnership, given that their main events are at opposite ends of the freestyle spectrum. Dedekind’s is the blur of whirling arms in the 50m that is all over in about 22 seconds. “Twenty-one,” he corrected, when that projection was mentioned to him outside the village this week. He’s yet to go into that territory, but he clearly believes he can next week and he’ll probably need to. Neethling’s favoured event is the gruelling 1E500m. If the 50m is the equivalent of 100m on the track, the 1 500m is the 10 000m, 30 lengths of sheer guts and endurance.
But the pair have a lot in common. For one thing, both will be part of the South African team in the 4x100m relay final on Saturday night, which will bring down the curtain on the first day of swimming competition. Neethling will not have been part of the team for the morning heats, with the small matter of the 400m freestyle – heats in the morning and final in the evening– to contend with as well. But it’s not inconceivable that he could end the day with two visits to the medal podium. Speaking of medals, another thing they have in common is that they’ve both been omitted from Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and the CNN/ Sports Illustrated website’s prediction lists. South Africa is expected to get just three medals in total, with only one in the pool, a silver for Penny Heyns in the 100m breaststroke.
“That was funny for me, because I’ve seen the medals and there were definitely two there for Penny,” joked Dedekind. Asked whether he got caught up in all the predictions that were going on, Dedekind says: “The only thing that hypes me up a little bit is when people predict I’m not going to be there.” The forecasts are clearly based on the current world rankings, which have Alexander Popov, Gary Hall Jnr and Anthony Ervin in the top three. However, Dedekind said he had chatted to Hall this week and heard that the American was “trying to hold his taper for this event”, having gone under 22 seconds at the United States trials just a few weeks ago. The proximity of those trials to the games proper may yet prove the undoing of Hall and Ervin. Another strong link between the close friends is that they are part of a growing Christian contingent within the team that also includes Heyns (obviously), Brett Petersen and Helene Muller. Also, they’ll complete their favourite events within 24 hours of each other, with Dedekind swimming his final the day Neethling swims his heat in the 1 500m. Dedekind could end up as the poster boy of South African sport at these games. But if his thunder was to be stolen by bosom buddy Neethling, who potentially has four opportunities to shoot for medals, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t mind in the least, provided he gives the type of performance he expects of himself. Of Neethling, and the awesome challenge of Grant Hackett and Kieren Perkins, seen in Sydney as virtually the only two contenders for the 1 500m title, Dedekind says: “I believe if Ryk is close to Hackett at the end, he can get him. He can do what he needs to win. Even if his body’s not capable of it, his mind is.” That kind of comment shows how much our best sprinter respects the ability of our best endurance swimmer. His attitude should inspire respect .