By Mark Etheridge
Christian Sadie has powered to South Africa’s first medal at the 2017 Para Sports Festival in Mexico.
Swimming at the IPC Swimming World Championships which, along with para-powerlifting, make up the festival, Sadie sealed silver in the S7 50-metre freestyle final.
The Stellenbosch-based swimmer clocked 29.66 seconds to end second behind Colombia’s Carlos Serrano Zarate who touched in 28.79. German swimmer Tobias Pollap was third in 30.35.
Sadie, who turned 17 just over a month ago, has a condition known as radial club hands, meaning he has smaller and shorter ams due to him missing the ulna bone in both forearms.
It was his second event in Mexico after he took fourth in the 100m free earlier in the competition.
An exhausted Sadie told Team SA after a long day of warm-up, competition and drug-testing: ‘I felt my race was very good and was very happy when I saw the time.
‘I felt faster than I’ve ever felt before and it was a personal best as well. It was a very long day for me and I was so nervous.
‘I did two warm-up sessions during the day, got into my swimsuit and I must say the S7 people I swam with were all very nice, especially the German guy [Pollap] and he helped my by speaking to me.
‘When I won, I looked directly at the time so didn’t know where I’d placed but the big thing was that I had finally broken the 30sec barrier. So I celebrated and then looked at the screen and saw I was second! When I got out of the pool, I was so full of joy that I nearly cried!.
‘I must say I’ve got a great team around me, with the other swimmers, and coach Theo Verster and para-powerlifter Ricardo Fitzpatrick, they’ve all been very supportive.’
Added coach Verster: ‘It was great, actually no, a phenomenal swim by Christian. He had a great start and nearly took the guy who won and swam a personal best, 1.6sec quicker than his previous best. We went into the final third quickest and he jumped up one position so really great for us as the South African team.’
Only other SA swimmer in finals action was Alani Ferreira. Like Sadie, also based in Stellenbosch, was in the S13 100m butterfly final where she ended sixth in a time of 1:25.51 as Italian Carlotta Gilli won in 1:02.64.
The only other female member of the team, Christelle Kriel, swam the heats of the SM14 200m Individual Medley and ended ninth in 2:59.01.
That made her first reserve for the evening final but there were no withdrawals.
Sadie didn’t have too much time for celebration though as he faces a tiring Tuesday with two finals scheduled – the 100m breast and 50m fly, one in the morning and one in the evening.