Personal bests, not medals, were the order of the day for South Africa’s Olympic team Grant Shimmin It was the strangest of situations. Two South African 400m athletes had qualified for the finals of the men’s and women’s events at the Olympics, both for the first time, and each had run outside the gold medal winner and finished sixth, surely not a bad effort considering the level of competition and their relative inexperience at that level. So how could one produce a swell of pride and the other a leave behind a feeling of mild disappointment? The answer contains two letters, which have been flashed up on the scoreboard at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium many times this week, along with a range of other abbreviations: PB. When Heide Seyerling ran the women’s final, alongside Cathy Freeman, she set a new personal best for the second time in the competition. In the second round, she’d lowered her PB from 50,91 to 50,87 seconds. Coach Marc Labuschagne had predicted before her departure that the blonde 24-year-old could make the final, but that she might have to take close on half a second off her previous best to get through. As it turned out, she was able to run slightly slower (51,06) in her semifinal and still find her way into the medal showdown on Monday. That was when she really put the hammer down, obliterating the time set in the semi- final with a blazing 50,05. After that run, she didn’t get PB behind her name. Instead, she got NR, for national record, having knocked off one of the oldest national marks in the book, Myrtle Bothma’s 50,12 seconds, run in 1986.
Back in Durban, Labuschagne was dizzy with delight. “We’re very pleased. We didn’t really expect the record; that was just a nice bonus,” he said, predicting that his charge, one of the youngest of the eight finalists, could go on to threaten the world’s best in years to come. Provided she continues on the path that has been mapped out, that seems inevitable. By contrast, when Hendrick Mokganyetsi finished sixth behind Michael Johnson a few minutes later, it was a disappointing end to what had been a fine meet for the man from Pretoria, who is the same age as Seyerling. The reason was the ease with which Mokganyetsi had got himself into the final, virtually being able to apply brakes late on in every race, including the semifinal. When it came to the final, however, he just seemed completely out of sorts. A number of factors could have contributed. The weather was chilly, which is not his bag, as evidence the fact that he ran relatively poor races in the semis and final after superb runs in the first two rounds before the rain swept in. Mokganyetsi himself said he seemed to have no kick at the business end of the race, so it’s possible he had found the challenge of racing on four consecutive days, against increasingly strong fields, a daunting one. It’s difficult to be churlish when a man reaches a final, especially if it’s something he hasn’t managed before. But Mokganyetsi went into the competition having equalled Arnaud Malherbe’s national record of 44,59 seconds 13 days earlier in Japan. Had he run that time again, he would have won a medal, as only Johnson and Alvin Harrison went faster in the final. Instead, he wasn’t close to breaking 45 seconds. Mokganyetsi is inexperienced and there’s no way that his final performance could ever be considered a failure. As he said afterwards: “I know now that I’m among the best eight 400m runners in the world.” But in assessing the performances of a team like the South African Olympic squad, one can only measure them against themselves. I predict that by Athens four years hence, Mokganyetsi will be among the top three in the world and he’ll have applied the lessons of Sydney to help him get there. Then watch him go. If personal bests are the standard by which we judge athletes, it’s hard to be too disappointed with Llewellyn Herbert’s third place in the 400m hurdles final, except that the 23-year-old was essentially the closest thing we had to Cathy Freeman at these Games. Just as Freeman was under immense pressure to crack 400m gold for Australia, a feat she achieved without ever approaching her PB, Herbert was seen as our best chance for gold and he’d done little to disabuse us of those expectations, talking after the semifinal of the psychological hold he’d gained over the eventual gold medallist, Angelo Taylor. Perhaps, in retrospect, Herbert got just a little cocky. After all, this was his first Olympic final. But he did run a PB, and a NR in winning his bronze medal. Unfortunately for him, while he was taking 0,02 seconds off his best, Taylor was improving a superior PB by 0,12 and Saudi Arabian Hadi Souan Somayli was slicing well over half a second off his best time to clock 47,53.
At a press conference on Thursday, Herbert, having slept on his bronze medal, announced, to applause from officials including National Olympic Committee of South Africa boss Sam Ramsamy and Athletics South Africa chief Leonard Chuene: “I still believe I’m the best 400m hurdler in the world.” Coach Jannie Viljoen hinted that there was some hard work ahead for his man, saying it was time to move his charge on to a 13-stride pattern. “I believe he’s strong enough for it now. At best, he’ll get down to around 47,5 with a 14-stride pattern, but if he wants to get down to 47,1 or 47,2, he needs to adopt the 13-stride pattern.” It’s good to know that the slight disappointment the Herbert camp has felt has already been translated into action. He clearly has a good team around him and his time will surely come. On the subject of personal bests, our swimmers did a lot better than many have yet given them credit for. Of course Penny Heyns didn’t improve, but she was at a personal crossroads, and performers of whom much was expected, like Brendon Dedekind, didn’t quite come up to the mark. But others, like Helene Muller and Mandy Loots, were brilliant. Take Muller’s performances in the 100m freestyle. In two heats and the final, she lowered her national record in stages from 55,82 to 55,19 seconds and then, as she strained every muscle to try for a medal in the 4x100m medley relay, swam an anchor leg of 54,77 secs. You can’t ask much more than that.