There were some sterling performances in the second-day events for individuals at the 32nd Halfway Telkom Midmar Mile at the popular Midlands resort on Sunday.
Keri-Anne Payne of the United Kingdom — who was the junior champion in 2001 before her family relocated to Sheffield, England — brilliantly defended the senior women’s title she won last year. Kloof Club swimmer Troyden Prinsloo captured the men’s title.
Two international swimmers dominated the main women’s race, Keri-Anne Payne, who is only 17 and already a member of the British swim team, and Edith van Dijk, a visiting Dutch open-water 25km champion.
Durban’s Melissa Corfe fell off the pace at the 400m mark as Payne went to the front and Van Dijk took up the chase.
Payne won the officially 1 639m-long race in 18 minutes and 43 seconds, with Van Dijk second in 18,55 and Corfe (Mr Price Seagulls) third in 19,27.
Cheryl Townsend (Seals), third last year behind Payne and Corfe, was fourth in 19,58 while 15-year-old Kate Whitfield, another swimmer from the UK, was fifth in 20,06. Kloof clubmates Lauren Bezuidenhout (20,15) and Kathryn Meaklim (20,31) were sixth and seventh respectively.
Payne said: ”I’m utterly exhausted, it was a much harder race than last year and the conditions were much rougher.”
The men’s race was also fiercely disputed as the leaders split into two distinctive echelons.
On the left, nearest the north shore of the dam, Kenneth Smith (Seals) led the initial sprint, but faded before the 400m buoy as Hollander Maarten van der Weidjen took over the lead.
On the right, a tussle developed between Prinsloo and Shaun Dias (Seals), with Gareth Fowler (Seagulls) and Terence Parkin (Seagulls) closely in touch.
Parkin was swimming his eighth and final mile as a fund-raising member of the 8-Mile Club, four on the Saturday and four on Sunday.
Van der Weidjen kept marginally ahead of Prinsloo at the 400m and 800m markers but it was Prinsloo who broke first just after the halfway point in the race, giving Dias the slip and dropping Fowler off at the same time.
In the second half of the race, Prinsloo and Van der Weidjen proceeded to open the gap between themselves and their chasers, and at 1 200m Prinsloo was marginally ahead but on a less direct route to the finish.
Prinsloo then showed how well prepared he was for the swim as he stepped up his stroke count and at the same time gradually corrected his direction to the finish, reaching it 12 seconds ahead of the Dutch open-water 25km champion to win in 18,28, collecting a R1 000 incentive bonus for finishing in less than 19 minutes and R5 000 for the win.
”Swimming in open water is a totally different ball game to pool swimming,” said Prinsloo. ”But I owe a lot to my coach, Nick Gray, and my parents who have encouraged me to train so hard over the past two years.
”It was only over the last 100m of the race that I knew I had clinched it.”
Van Weidjen, who was a leukaemia patient only four years ago and fought a gallant victory over the disease to take up long-distance swimming, said: ”I am very satisfied with my performance. I am out of my territory, Troy is more in his as a 1 500m specialist.
”If we had been in the same group of swimmers from the start, it might have been a different race.”
Third-placed Fowler (19,08) said: ”I was also happy with my performance, considering the lack of quality training I have done.”
Fowler was in Port Elizabeth on Saturday as captain of the KwaZulu-Natal Central team, who retained the interprovincial surf lifesaving title by four points over Western Province and only flew back to Durban late on Saturday evening.
The indefatigable Parkin was fourth in 19,10, his fastest of all eight miles he has accomplished. Pretoria’s Pieter Swart (19,12) was fifth, Dias (19,15) sixth and the 2004 junior winner, Chad Ho (19,16), seventh.
The junior titles went to two other Kloof swimmers. Nerine Grundlingh winning the girls’ 13 years and under title in 21,40 from club training partner Rene Warnes (21,41), with Kerry Brooke-Oliver (Seals) third (21,56).
The boys’ title went to Myles Brown (20,19) with two Seals’ swimmers next, Henri Schoeman (20,27) and David Lindeque (20,32). — Sapa