The statistics will show that TuksAthletics has retained the Varsity-title, but numbers can never do justice to the drama that played out on the track last week.

Before the start of the relays, Tuks was in third place, trailing Pukke by 345 points and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) by 37 points. Many thought that was it and that Tuks would be dethroned in the competition, but then again the Tuks athletes were never going to give up without a fight. And fight they did.

It started with the medley relay. The team indeed did not have the best of starts. Johnathan Bredenkamp who had to run the last 800 metres received the baton second last. Only UJ were behind Tuks. It did not seem to faze Bredenkamp. As a seasoned campaigner, he started to catch and pass the leaders just missing out on catching up with the Kovsies athlete.

Kovsies won in 5:49.94 with Tuks second in 5:50.11. More relevant was that UJ was four seconds adrift and Pukke eight seconds.

Then Tuks’s “Fantastic Four” – Valeska Nel, Megan Phillips, Ria Moloi and Taylon Bieldt – did a repeat performance of what they did at the first meeting and won the women’s 4x100m-relay to clinch the victory for Tuks.

Although Pukke won the event on Friday, Tuks was the overall winners of the series by a mere 29 points when the team totals for the two Varsity-meetings were added up. It was only the third time in 15 meetings that Tuks lost out winning a Varsity-meeting.

There were quite excellent performances by the Tuks athletes. Constant Pretorius winning the 400m-hurdles in a time of 50.11s comes to mind as does Thembo Monareng’s 10.32s performance in the 100m, Malisela Senona’s 20.82s run in the 200m and Yvonne Robson 1.80m in the high jump.

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