UP-Tuks wins seventh USSA title
Tuks' swimming team continued on the success of their colleagues from other sporting teams at this year's Universities Sport South Africa (USSA) championships.
The University of Pretoria raked in their seventh USSA title for 2017 over the weekend through the gutsy performance of the UP-Tuks swimmers.
The Tuks swimmers made a near clean sweep. The team did not only winning overall, the men’s team was also victorious while the women’s team finished second in their team competition. To crown it all Neil Fair and Tatjana Schoenmaker were the respective best male and female swimmers at the gala held at the Tuks Swimming Pool.
Maties finished second overall with Varsity College third.
Fair who is a second-year medical student ascribed their success to hard work and dedication.
“Two years ago we lost to Maties by a few points, so we had just motivation to put in the long hard hours.”
Fair won the 200m and 400m individual medley-events as well as the 1500m freestyle and finished second in the 100m and 200m backstroke. He won his sixth medal by finishing third in the 50m backstroke.
Winning the 400m individual medley was a definite highlight for Fair because he set a new USSA-record by swimming 4:36.09.
There can be no doubt that Fair is passionate about swimming. His dilemma, however, is that he sees becoming a medical doctor as his calling in life. It means every day is for him a juggling act between finding time to go to class, study and train.
“I am lucky if I get to swim for about two hours a day but when I do get into the pool, I try and make every minute count,” he said afterwards.
Fair must be doing something right because he has represented South Africa at the recent World Student Games in Taipei as well as last year’s World Short Course Championships in Canada.
Fair is not yet sure as to in what field he wants to specialise once he has finished his studies, but he has got an inkling that he might become an orthopaedic surgeon.
“The only thing that actually matters once I start to practice is to be a good doctor.”
UP-Tuks’s women’s hockey team, chess, judo, golf, women’s beach volleyball and rowing team all also have won their respective USSA Tournaments in 2017.
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