By GARY LEMKE in Swakopmund
With the swimmers having left the building, Team SA’s track and field athletes stepped forward to continue the gold rush at the Region 5 Games in Namibia. The track and field squad took their tally to 23 with another dozen medals accumulated at the Vineta Stadium.
Swimming contributed 49 medals to the Team SA total of 102, and athletics is sitting on 23 as the action heads into the final day on Thursday.
The eight gold medals won on Wednesday were by Davida Strong, Anoxolo Mcetywa, Karla Bouwer, Michaela Spocter, Jo-Ane Lamprecht, Enrique Bosch, Francois Boschoff and Dewald Bezuidenhout.
The latter upgraded the bronze medal he’d won in the discus to gold in the shot put, after an opening heave of 17.02m was good enough see off teammate Erik Senekal, who had taken shot put gold on Monday. Senekal measured 15.54m and admitted afterwards that he had some difficulty using the 6kg put. “This is the first time I’d competed with that weight and it made a difference,” he observed.
High jumper Michaela Sprocter took gold with a best clearance of 1.70m and said it was more about the medal than the height on an afternoon when the wind blew the bar off a few times.
“Luckily I’m from Cape Town so he wind didn’t bother me,” the Tygerberg athlete laughed. “I’m still not at my best as I’m recovering from a groin injury, so I couldn’t beat my PB of 1.76m, but I’m happy with this gold in my first international competition. I know that this is a platform for bigger events.”
De Villiers Lamprecht was left a frustrated and aggrieved athlete after an appeal to promote him to the winner of the boys 800m race was overturned by the race referee. It looked a fait accompli that the Team SA runner would benefit from a disqualification of the Zimbabwe athlete who crossed the line marginally ahead of him, after he’d been elbowed and pushed while trying to get past his rival in the home straight.
The judges though though otherwise and Lamprecht, who crossed the line would have understandably felt denied a gold that would have given him the 800m/1500m double. He and fellow Team SA finalist Andrew van Wyk had sat well off the pace as the leaders took the bell in 57 seconds, but the Grade 11 Grey College pupil made good progress down the back straight.
He then lengthened his large stride to challenge 100m out and he and his Zimbabwean rival went side-by-side down the home straight and just when it looked as though the South African was finishing the stronger, he was barged sideways. “I almost fell down,” he lamented afterwards. Viewing the race head on from beyind the finish, one can sympathise with Lamprecht, but the officials did not have that visual evidence to review. Van Wyk ran on for third place, with the winning time being 1:54.57.
Photo: ROGER SEDRES
UPDATE: De Villiers Lamprecht was later promoted to gold and Andrew van Wyk to silver with the athlete who crossed the line first, Zimbabwe’s Gift Khumalo, disqualified