Young hurdles star could make international breakthrough in Olympic year
After she narrowly missed out on a place in the final of the 100m hurdles at the world championships this year as a 21-year-old athlete, experts believe that Pretoria's brightest rising athletics star will be able to compete with the very best at next year's Olympic Games.
The South African record holder in the 100m hurdles for women, Marione Fourie, was one of the favourites in the South African athletics team to possibly achieve a podium place at the recent World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
After all, this BSportSci student at Tuks made history in July this year, barely a month before the world champs, when she set a new South African record of 12.55 seconds in this popular event.
Fourie’s hurdling technique is near perfect, which makes her a very consistent participant in the short hurdles race. In South Africa, her winning times mainly varied between 13.01s and 12.98s. She has been better in Europe, where she has consistently been running 12.7 seconds.
Eventually Fourie ended sixth in the 100m hurdles semifinals in 12.89 seconds, crossing the line 0.29 outside the time required to secure a place in the final.
In the final, only four athletes ran faster than her personal best. So, she will know in the back of her mind that, with a bit of luck, she could have qualified for that final
Ironically, only six athletes at the world championship in the semi-final rounds ran better times than Fourie’s SA record, which she basically set a month before the championship.
This fact should inspire the 21-year-old Tuks student, a former pupil at Hoërskool Driehoek in Vanderbijl Park, to work even harder on the way to next year’s Olympic Games in Paris. Psychologically, she should now be over the blockage that might have caused her to doubt if she had seen all the big names in world athletics against whom she had to compete.
Fourie, who these days lives in the Moot in Pretoria, has youth on her side and considering how much she has improved this past season, she may make her big breakthrough on the international stage next year in Paris. She finished fifth in the semi-finals during last year’s World Athletics Championships in Eugene, USA, with a time of 12.93 seconds. This means that she has improved by almost half a second in one season.
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