World Champs in focus: Are SA’s athletes ready to target bigger podiums?

It has been difficult to gauge the form of the country’s best track and field athletes this year, with a relatively sedate domestic season preceding a packed international campaign.

Having returned to major competition at the African Athletics Championships in Mauritius last week, however, we finally have a clearer picture of what to expect from them at the World Championships in Eugene next month and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in August.

Relay potential

No South African athletes have managed to go under 10 seconds in the 100m sprint this year with a legal wind, but there is undoubtedly enough depth for the 4x100m relay team to be competitive.

In-form speedsters Akani Simbine and Clarence Munyai were missing from the final in Mauritius, with Henricho Bruintjies and junior prodigy Benjamin Richardson leading a second-strong squad to the silver medal.

Though there seem to be some personality clashes in the team, however, if all the athletes are available and national relay coach Paul Gorries can find a way for them to gel, they’re going to be difficult to beat.

And they might not have the quality to compete for the podium at the World Championships, but continental 400m champion Miranda Coetzee spearheads a national women’s 4x400m squad that might well have enough depth to produce a challenge at the Commonwealth Games.

A growing giant

One of just a few South African athletes who were able to make any real impact in the track and field competition at last year’s Tokyo Games, where he finished sixth in the shot put, Kyle Blignaut is one of the country’s best prospects ahead of the 2024 spectacle in Paris.

If he wants to be competitive there, however, he’ll need to be consistently producing big throws, which he has struggled to do this year.

Pacing about the mixed zone after the African Championships final, where he secured the silver medal with a season’s best 20.60m, Blignaut was clearly frustrated with his result, but he said he would accept it as another learning curve.

Nobody seems to put more pressure on him than himself, and Blignaut will be a medal contender at the Commonwealth Games, but he’s not yet ready to be targeting a world title.

Young and brave

It’s a bit unrealistic to suggest he’ll be changing the landscape of international middle-distance running this season, but Ryan Mphahlele again showed real potential in Mauritius.

Going out hard in the men’s 1,500m final, Mphahlele was hoping to either dip under the World Championships qualifying standard (3:35.00) or win the race in the hope of securing a wild-card slot for Eugene as the continental champion.

He was very nearly rewarded for his gutsy effort, grabbing silver in 3:36.74 as he was narrowly edged out by Kenyan athlete Abel Kipsang who finished fourth at last year’s Tokyo Olympics.

Mphahlele has repeatedly shown that he is not afraid to run from the front, and he’s got the speed and the talent to make him a real threat over the next few years.

Gaining experience

Like Mphahlele, Prudence Sekgodiso has emerged as a middle-distance prospect with world-class potential.

She battled in the 800m final in Mauritius, however, and settled for third place in 2:03.56, well outside her season’s best.

Sekgodiso has certainly got the ability to chase more prestigious medals, but she will also need more experience at championship level before she is able to rattle lead groups packed with East African rockets.

Perhaps the find of the season thus far – along with youth sprinter Viwe Gingqi – Sekgodiso would have been hoping for more than bronze at the African Championships, but she can take some real value from her medal-winning effort.

So what now?

The competition at the Commonwealth Games will be tougher than the African Championships, and while the SA track and field team has not yet been named for the multi-sport showpiece, it is likely to be a relatively small squad.

They shouldn’t have too much trouble raking in medals, however, and with the form the athletes displayed in Mauritius, the country should be well represented on the podium in Birmingham.

But the World Championships is a different matter entirely, and the reality is that the team will struggle to turn things around after failing to reach the podium at the last edition of the global spectacle in Doha in 2019.

This could be the year Simbine finally grabs a well-deserved World Championships medal in the 100m event, and the sprint relay team should be able to give it a go.

There are also some outside shots, like Stephen Mokoka in the marathon and even Wayne Snyman in the new 35km race walk.

However, a promising new generation of senior athletes which includes the likes of Blignaut, Mphahlele, Sekgodiso, and 400m hurdlers Soks Zazini and Zeney van der Walt, are probably going to need more time before they can really compete at the highest level.