Local young stars excel at athletics ASA junior championships
Several local athletes from Pretoria were responsible for world-class performances at last week’s ASA U18 and U20 Track & Field Championships.
The AGN team finished on top of the medals table with 30 gold, 31 silver and 16 bronze medals at this past weekend’s ASA U18 and U20 Track & Field Championships, which was presented at the Dal Josaphat Athletics Stadium in Paarl in the Western Cape.
Three of the best performances at the championships were produced by Gauteng North athletes.
In the junior women’s flat 400m sprint, world junior 400m hurdles champion Zeney van der Walt (AGN) stormed to victory in a personal best of 53.74 seconds.
Van der Walt said before the championship that she has set her sights to do what only three other local junior female athletes have managed to do, and that is to dip under 53 seconds in the 400m.
Unfortunately, she did not succeed, but the young world champion was still satisfied with her performance.
“I’m really happy with the result. I wanted to work on my speed but I’m going to focus on the hurdles again for the rest of the season,” Van der Walt said.
The next time she will be in action over the hurdles will be 13 April in Bloemfontein.
Sokwakhana “Soks” Zazini was in dominant form in the junior men’s 400m hurdles final.
Having won the world youth and junior titles in 2017 and 2018, Zazini was expected to steal the show on home soil, and while he did not display his best form, he won comfortably in 50.72.
“Of course I’m happy, but I just need to work on my fitness and a little bit on my technique and stride patterns. But everything is coming together now. This is my season’s best, so it’s looking good but it’s still early in the season,” Zazini said.
Another local athlete, Sinesipho Dambile, was one of the big stars of the championships.
Dambile charged to a stunning victory in the youth boys 200m final, clocking 20.68 seconds to finish 0.81 ahead of his nearest competitor.
“It’s not easy to go sub-21 but I just kept pushing myself because I wanted to be the SA champion,” Dambile said..
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