Grant Shimmin athletics
A representative of the sponsors was moved to observe at the Absa Series launch in Johannesburg this week that the six-meeting series represented “the pinnacle” of South African domestic athletics.
That is patently not the case, although an event that would come closer to the mark the national senior track and field championships, set for Durban in early March does have the same backers.
In reality, though, for top athletes to be performing at their peak at this stage of the year would be nothing short of suicidal when the focus of the year, as it always does these days, falls on an event seven or eight months down the line. In this case, it’s the biennial world championships, set for Edmonton, Canada, from August 3 to 12.
Our recent athletics history is littered with cases of athletes who peaked too early in the year and couldn’t perform when it mattered most. The 1999 world championships in Seville, where only Hezekiel Sepeng got among the medallists, is a classic case in point.
Before that, in both 1996 and 1997, ace sprinter Adri de Jongh burned up South African tracks with a string of qualifiers early in those years, but was unable to produce anything when it really mattered. She travelled to the United States with the Atlanta Olympic team, but was ruled out by injury before the Games even started and then, at the 1997 world championships in Athens, she was eliminated in the second round of the 400m, when she apparently passed out halfway through the heat.
Last year Marcus la Grange topped the world list for the 200m with his coastal time of 20,35 seconds set early in the year and was one of the dominant athletes among the country’s excellent crop of 400m runners. But when athletes had to quali-fy for the final Sydney team, he was found wanting and missed out on the trip to Australia.
So not too many world-class times or distances should be expected in the series, especially in the early meets, the first of which takes place at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace near Rustenburg on Monday. A few local athletes may well have an eye on the world indoor championships in Lisbon in early March as does British visitor Kelly Holmes and would need to start turning in some peak performances as the series nears its climax at Stellenbosch on February 23. The six meetings are also a good opportunity for new talent, including some who did so well at last year’s world juniors in Chile, to break through on to the national stage.
Athletes like Olympic bronze medallists Frantz Kruger and Llewellyn Herbert are well away from their peaks and will be using the upcoming meetings to get into gear for a long season focused on Canada. Asked at the launch when his first race of the new season would be, a typically jovial Herbert replied “I don’t know”, with a broad smile on his face. Certainly, he’s not down to contest any of the first three meets, while Sepeng is slated to run the 3?000m on Monday and the 1 500m in Pietersburg five days later, a clear indication that he is still a while away from contesting his specialist event, the 800m.