One might have thought that retaining her women’s high-jump world title would have made it a good day for South Africa’s Hestrie Cloete at the World Championships in Paris on Sunday, but the opposite was true.
”It’s actually a rather bad day,” said Cloete.
”Three years ago to the day my sister’s baby died and my eldest sister died just before I came to Europe,” she added, adding that the tragedies were still to the forefront of her thoughts.
However, she is trying not to dwell on too much on the grief as she attempts to rewrite athletics history.
After her winning clearance of 2,06m, her 14th African record, she had three efforts to clear a world record of 2,10m.
”I tried a world record first in at the Golden League meeting in Berlin in August and this is the second time I’ve tried it. It felt much better this time.
”I’m getting closer. On the right day, the right place, at the right time, it’s there,” added Cloete.
The record of 2,09m, which has stood to Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova since the 1987 World Championships, has been so long on the record books that the 25-year-old high jumper, who celebrated her birthday on Tuesday, cannot remember where she was when it was set.
”I was nine, I think, but I know I was at school at that age and can’t remember what I was doing although I’ve seen video of it since.”
Cloete could easily have been a top-class athlete in another discipline but for her low pain threshold.
She was a promising 400m and 800m runner in her schooldays in the small North West province town of Coligny but found the training too hard.
”I chose the high jump as there is not as much training to do as for 400m or 800m,” said Cloete, who started specialising in 1994 at the age of 16.
Within a year, she had won the African Games and never looked back.
She advanced so fast that by the 1999 World Championships she had 12 African high jump records to her name, and also four Commonwealth records, but she came crashing to earth from her lofty heights at the 1999 World Championships.
”I was too relaxed in the qualification stage and messed everything up. Luckily the Lord was good to me and made me make up for the mess.”
She won a silver medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, with her first world title coming the following year.
Now she starts as the long-distance favourite for the Olympic title in Athens.
The only problem if she were to become the first South African woman to win an Olympic athletics gold medal in more than half a century is that it might put a few other items — although perhaps not a world record — on hold.
Cloete has openly said that she intends retiring after Athens and having a family.
”Although if next year ends as well as this year I might have to think again about that,” said Cloete. — Sapa-AFP