Mbulaeni Mulaudzi and LJ van Zyl, two of South Africa’s most talented young athletes, recorded brilliant victories at the Athens Super Grand Prix on Tuesday night and boosted South Africa’s hopes for the World Championships in Helsinki in August.
Mulaudzi took revenge on the Olympic champion, Yuriy Borzakovskiy, in the 800m, while the 19-year-old Van Zyl defeated a top class field in the 400m hurdles and improved by 0,23s on his previous best with a world-class 48,16s.
Mulaudzi, silver medal winner at last year’s Olympic Games in the same stadium, ran a well-judged race and at the end scored an easy win against the current fastest 800m runners in the world. His time of 1:44,12s was the quickest of the year in the world and 0,17s better than his traditional Kenyan rival, Wilfred Bungei, who finished second in 1:44,29s.
The Olympic champion never entered the picture and had to settle for fifth place in 1:44,89s.
Van Zyl, world junior champion at the age of 16 in 2002, ran a sensational race in the outside lane and won quite comfortably. He has had a wonderful year so far and his coach, Hennie Kotze, was full of praise after the race and after speaking to his young charge.
”Technically, he ran a perfect race. To run in the outside lane is never easy but [Van Zyl] coped with it in style. I was very impressed. He told me before the race that he wanted to be first when entering the final straight and that the rest would follow.”
”Although he was only third when entering the straight, the rest did follow and the victory was something special,” Kotze said.
Van Zyl has now moved into fourth place on the South African all-time list and maintained his fifth place on the 2005 world list.
Kotze was equally thrilled with the performance of Surita Febbraio, the South African women’s champion who finished third in her race in a time of 54,66s behind current world champion, Jana Pittman of Australia and Anna Jesien of Poland who clocked times of 53,44s and 54,27s respectively.
”She ran a good race and finished strongly showing that she can still go much faster,” Kotze said.
Elizna Naude, the South African discus champion and record holder, was up against the best in the world and had to settle for tenth place with a distance of 57,41m.
Franka Dietsch of Germany won with a fine 64,92m. – Sapa