While the young Lara van Niekerk from Pretoria once again made the experts’ heads turn at the past weekend’s Grand Prix swimming gala in Durban, a few more local swimmers were also in top form with great performances.

The 18-year-old Pretoria swimmer, Van Niekerk, seems to improve with each meet. She swam a personal best time in Friday night’s 100m breaststroke heats in 1:06.52 and went marginally slower in the final but still comfortably claimed the title in 1:06.74.

In December Van Niekerk broke Tatjana Schoenmaker’s national and continental 50m breaststroke record (becoming the first South African woman to dip under 30 seconds).

On Saturday, she put that speed to good use in Durban, finishing almost a full five seconds clear of second-placed Emily Visagie.

After scratching from the 200m butterfly final because of a lack of training, the still-recovering international star swimmer, Chad Le Clos’s two titles of the morning came in the 100m freestyle in 49.41s and the 50m butterfly in 24.38s, where he edged out another star from Pretoria, 17-year-old Pieter Coetzé.

Coetzé later went on to claim a comfortable victory in his main event, the 100m backstroke, in 57.72s.

Meanwhile, 19-year-old Tuks swimmer Ruan Breytenbach’s two titles came in in the 400m individual medley, which he won in a time of 4:27.63 and the 200m breaststroke in 2:20.30.

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