/ 21 March 2006

Team South Africa add to Games medal tally

Team South Africa track and field stars Janus Robberts, Geraldine Pillay and Hilton Langenhoven had the team village vuvuzela blower working overtime on Monday as their evening medals took the rainbow nation’s tally to 17 medals at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia.

The vuvuzela — the famous horn often seen at sports events in South Africa — is blown by a Team South Africa official at the office inside the Commonwealth Games village upon notification of a medal won by a Team South Africa member.

Robberts (gold medal in the shot put with a winning throw of 19,76m), Pillay (silver medal in the 100m final in 11,31 seconds) and Langenhoven (silver medal in the 100m T12 race in 11,22 seconds for elite athletes with disabilities) allowed the South Africans to be noticed both at the athletics meet at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and in the Commonwealth Games village.

With both South Africa and Scotland vying for a top-five placing on the final medal standings at the Games, the competition is hotting up between Team South Africa’s vuvuzela player and Scotland’s bag-pipe specialist.

Team South Africa marksmen Daniel van Tonder and Allan MacDonald fired consistently at the target in the men’s 25m centre-fire pistol pairs final to win bronze with a total of 1 135 points, compared with the 1 150 scored by gold medallists India.

South Africa’s trips combination of Neil Burkett, Gideon ”Gippo” Vermeulen and Eric Johannes added a further bronze medal after winning a tie break against England, following the games score ending level at one-all.

By the end of the fifth day of competition at the 18th edition of the Commonwealth Games, Team South Africa athletes had won 17 medals (six gold, four silver and seven bronze).

On the boxing front, flyweight Jackson Chauke and Team South Africa’s vice-captain, bantamweight Bongani Mahlangu, kept their medal dreams on course in recording preliminary-round victories in their respective weight divisions.

Chauke beat Sri Lankan Kumara Jayantha 28-17 on points over four rounds, while Mahlangu showed immense class in recording a 19-11 points win over England’s Nicholas James.

Weightlifter Darren Anthony took fifth place in the 85kg division, with best lifts of 140kg (snatch) and 170kg (clean and jerk) to total 310kg.

Team South Africa’s women’s hockey side saw their title chances dashed as they went down 2-1 to Malaysia. — Sapa