Pretoria’s Commonwealth swimming champion, Lara van Niekerk, completed an impressive breaststroke clean sweep by adding the 200m gold to her collection on the final day of the SA National short course (25m) Championships in Pietermaritzburg this past weekend.

The 22-year-old, who is well on the way to reclaiming the form that took her to two Commonwealth Games titles and long and short course World Championship medals, claimed victory in the 200m breaststroke on Sunday in a time of 2 minutes 24.81 seconds to add to her 50m and 100m crowns.

Better known for her sprinting prowess in the shorter breaststroke events, Van Niekerk said she uses the 200m long course as training for her 100m, but admitted she much prefers the short course version of the race.

“I enjoy the 25-metre short course 200m because it’s all about pull downs and you can keep up your speed, so I actually did really enjoy that race,” she said after her third title.

According to Van Niekerk, the last 50m, she did really have to dig deep.

“But I think just the fact that I could keep going and keep my tempo up is a really positive thing for me, it just shows my fitness is back where it should be. Now it’s just the little technical things that we just need to sharpen up,” she explained.

Speaking about her performances in general in terms of regaining confidence, Van Niekerk added that it has only been positive.

“There’s not one race I’m upset about, so that’s a very good thing. I have some videos, I’m going to go and look back at them and just see exactly what I can work on, but I think overall the stroke is where it should be, it’s more about just getting the speed up again, fitness is there, so it’s looking good,” she concluded.

Meanwhile, another local Pretoria swimmer, Duné Coetzee, added the 200m butterfly title to the 200m and 400m freestyle golds she already had in the bag.

Coetzee won in a time of 2:14.16, pushed all the way by 16-year-old Abigail Kotze, who got the better of Coetzee in the 100m event earlier in the week. Kotze was a close second in 2:14.85.

Coetzee admitted afterwards, she was relieved to have felt better in the afternoon compared to her morning heat.

“This morning I quite literally felt awful, and I think that’s just because I raced the 400 free very late last night, so I think that was still in me,” she said.

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