A South African athletics season that started badly improved in the last couple of weeks
Martin Gillingham
Anything’s possible at Athletics South Africa these days so it won’t come as any surprise if the powers-that-be in Houghton call a special meeting and declare that, from now on, the track and field calendar will start on August 12 each year.
It’s an idea that might find support. For starters, South Africa would have celebrated its first world champion before tea time on the first day of the season this year and only just missed out on another when the men’s sprint relay squad scorched home for silver barely half-an-hour later.
Indeed, by the end of the first month South African athletics would have been fting a phalanx of champions at world, Goodwill Games and World Student Games level. It would be fair to say that never in the history of South African sport would one of its codes have enjoyed such a remarkable first 30 days.
Of course, the new calendar would also enable the sport’s officials to conveniently file away the turbulent times of May, June and July when headlines were dominated by allegations of corruption in the administration and the first 11 days of August which were littered by displays of ineptitude by our team at the world championships in Edmonton.
One of the few flickers of hope in those last few days of the 2000 / 2001 athletics year was provided by a young black kid from Venda. There can be few more inspirational stories than that of Mbulaeni Mulaudzi. When Hezekiel Sepeng won silver at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, the 15-year-old schoolboy, whose nearest athletics track was more than one hour away by road, could not see beyond his aspirations of becoming a professional footballer.
But then he discovered track and field. Mulaudzi first chanced his arm at the short sprints. “I’m a small guy and I don’t have big muscles,” he says, “so when I was 17 I switched to the middle distances.”
Five years on from Atlanta and now studying at the Vaal Triangle Technikon in Vanderbijlpark Mulaudzi can boast that he has been to his first world championships. What’s more, he didn’t waste the experience. He made the final of the 800m in Edmonton and, the following week, set a lifetime best of 1:44.01 at the Welt-klasse meeting in Zurich. Zurich is the most prestigious of all the Grand Prix meetings and, though Mulaudzi beat only one of his rivals there, the man behind him was Olympic champion Nils Schumann of Germany.
Another youngster celebrating a remarkable performance this month is Alwyn Myburgh. He is even younger than Mulaudzi, who celebrated his 21st birthday last Saturday. Myburgh has to wait until next month to reach that landmark but will do so having already established himself among the world’s top 400m hurdlers.
Despite inflicting defeat on Llewellyn Herbert in Potchefstroom in February, Myburgh has been used to competing in the shadow of the Olympic bronze medallist. But a fortnight ago, as Herbert was returning to form with a silver medal in the Goodwill Games, Myburgh was going one better. The World Student Games are not quite the significant date on the sporting calendar they once were, but no one will argue with Myburgh’s 48.09sec in winning the title in Beijing.
Just half-a-dozen men have run faster than that this year and it was a significant improvement on his run at the world championships where he was eliminated in the semifinals.
At just 21 or thereabouts, both Mulaudzi and Myburgh have outstanding futures. And if in a career they can achieve half of what high jumper Hestrie Cloete has done in the past few weeks they will be happy. At 23, Cloete still has time on her side. Two years ago she was written off in some quarters after failing to make the final at the world championships in Seville. That in spite of having jumped 2,04m a fortnight or so earlier.
Since then Cloete has made few mistakes. She missed the Olympic title on countback but prevailed on the basis of the same technicality in Edmonton. What she has achieved since, however, has placed beyond doubt any dispute there might have been over her number one status. She sailed over 2,01m on her way to victory in Zurich before winning at the Goodwill Games and Grand Prix finals.
South African athletics has, not undeservedly, attracted some pretty rotten headlines in recent months. In the past few weeks, however, the athletes have helped redress that. Here’s to the rest of the new athletics year, ending August 11 2002.