South Africa picked up their first medal on the opening day of the World Para Swimming Championships in Manchester when Kat Swanepoel surged to the silver medal.
There is a select squad of six competing at the Championships, looking to build on last year’s performance in Madeira where they won four medals. It didn’t take long for Swanepoel to get the ball rolling with a fine effort in the women’s SB3 50m breaststroke.
Swimming in lane three, Swanepoel had gone into the straight final with a qualifying time of 58.61sec.
She was up against the formidable Italian Monica Boggioni, but gave the favourite a good fight. Boggioni raced to the wall first in 55.55sec, but Swanepoel’s 57.19 was not only good enough to take silver, but it also was the first African record posted by Team SA at these championships.
Nathan Hendricks had opened Team SA’s campaign in the morning session on Monday, when he placed fourth in his heat in the men’s S13 100m butterfly in 1min 00.97sec.
The other representative on the day was Christian Sadie, who is no stranger to records and medals on the major stage. He finished fourth, just off the podium, in the final of the SM7 200m individual medley. Sadie’s qualifying time was 2:34.08 and in the final he clocked 2:36.10. The race was won in world record time by Andrii Trusov of Ukraine in 2:28.19. Sadie had put himself in medal contention at halfway, when he was lying third, but Argentinian Inaki Basiloff edged past him in the second half of the race.
This time round Team SA is represented by six swimmers – Cornelle Leach, Christian Sadie, Nathan Hendricks, Kat Swanepoel, Danika Vyncke and Alani Ferreira.