Athletes from Athletics Gauteng North (AGN) continued their long-standing dominance of the senior national championship this past weekend.

The AGN team won the championship, which was held at the NWU McArthur Stadium in Potchefstroom, with great ease.

In fact, their dominance was so overwhelming that the AGN team earned more than double the points (535) than the 265 points of their nearest rival, Athletics Central Northwest (ACNW).

Central Gauteng Athletics (CGA) with 240 points was third, followed by Western Province Athletics (WPA) with 135 points in fourth place and Athletics Free State (AFS) with 125 points in fifth place.

In terms of medal winners, AGN, with 45 in total, also took home almost double the number (23 each) of ACNW and CGA.

The Pretoria team’s 17 gold medals are ten more than ACNW and CGN’s seven each. The rest of AGN’s medals consisted of 14 silver and 14 bronze.

Although there were several brilliant performances at the championship, not a single national record was broken.

The one division in which the AGN team’s women were unable to dominate this year was the short sprints. However, the men did their part and Gift Leotlela won gold in the 100m in a time of 9.99s, while Sinesipho Dambile was crowned 200m champion with a winning time of 20.11s.

The ladies did their part in the hurdles races. The 17-year-old schoolgirl from Prestige College in Hammanskraal, Tumi Ramokgopa, won the 100m hurdles in 13.55s in the absence of Marioné Fourie, while Zeney Geldenhuys was the champion in the 400m hurdles in a time of 55.09s.

Another local star from Pretoria, Glenrose Xaba (AGN) successfully defended her national title in the women’s 5 000m race, winning comfortably in 15:27,95 ahead of her training partner Karabo More (16:10,40).

Xaba added the 5 000m crown to the SA 10 000m title she earned at the ASA Grand Prix meeting held in Cape Town earlier this month.

Carina Swiegers of AGN won the 3000m Steeple Chase in a time of 10:53,34 and Williams Rivers won the men’s 20km walk in 1h32m58s.

In the field events, several local athletes emerged as champions.

In the men’s shot put, the 20-year old Aiden Smith (AGN) won his first national senior title, producing a best throw of 20.31m to beat former Olympic finalist Kyle Blignaut from CGA, who landed the shot at 20.07m.

Colette Uys won two gold medals by triumphing in both the discus (57.94m) and shot put (18.14m) for women.

In the long- and triple jump events, AGN made a clean sweep. Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Jovan van Vuuren won the men’s long jump with a distance of 8.00m, while Danielle Nolte was crowned women’s champion with a distance of 6.21m.

Peace Adedokun (16.19m) and Zinzi Xulu (13.44m) are AGN’s two new national triple jump champions, in the men’s and women’s divisions respectively.

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