South Africa’s brilliant 22-year-old 400m hurdler LJ van Zyl issued a gutsy warning when he defeated a world-class field at the IAAF Golden Gala meet in Rome’s Olympic Stadium on Friday night.
His time of 48,24 seconds was a career best in a nail-biting finish against American Kerron Clement, 2007’s fastest runner. He will be a certain medal contender at the world championships in Osaka next month and has now moved into sixth place on the 2007 best-performance list.
Clement’s time was 48,26 seconds after a desperate effort to catch the Commonwealth champion. James Carter, the American champion and world’s fastest of the year, had no reply when Van Zyl passed him on the inside, and finished in third place in 48,31 seconds.
For the first time this season, a proper lane was allocated to Van Zyl, who had an empty fourth lane between him and Carter after world champion Bershawn Jackson withdrew shortly before the start of the race.
Van Zyl, world junior champion in 2002 at the age of 16, caught up with Carter after entering the final straight and stayed in front to the end. It took the officials longer than usual to sort out the photo finish and declare Van Zyl the winner.
All the other South Africans gave a good account of themselves. Mbulaeni Mulaudzi looked like the world star of 2006 when he finished second in the 800m in 1:46,37. He was defeated by Mohammed Al Sahli (1:46,18) of Saudi Arabia, who narrowly slipped past the South African on his outside at the finish.
The long jumpers struggled to record long distances, but Godfrey Mokoena did well to finish third in a very tight contest with a jump of 8,02m. Miguel Pate (United States) led with a distance of 8,06m until the final stages of the meeting when Andrew Howe of Italy produced a final winning effort of 8,12m.
South Africa’s two qualifiers for the world championships did well to finish among the top six.
Hardus Pienaar (fifth) narrowly defeated world junior champion Robert Oosthuizen by 67cm. Their respective distances were 81,89m and 81,22m. Victory went to an Olympic champion, Andreas Thorkildsen of Norway, with a massive 88,36m against the 86,09m of Finland’s Tero Pitkamaki, who lost his status as one of the Golden League jackpot contenders. — Sapa