It was special, says Schoeman

2006-03-16 14:41

Melbourne - Olympic champions South Africa backed-up their pre-Games taunts towards Australia on Thursday with a Commonwealth Games record swimming performance in the 4x100m men's relay that ended the host nation's 28-year stranglehold on the event.

After labelling the Australians vulnerable without superstars Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett, the South Africans remained undaunted in the face of a screaming Melbourne crowd to take the gold medal.

South African lead-off swimmer Roland Schoeman said he and teammates Lyndon Ferns, Johannes Zandberg and Ryk Neethling knew they needed to produce a special performance in front of their rivals' home support.

Schoeman shrugged off the South African team's failure to break the world record he helped set in Athens, saying it was enough to overcome the challenge of Australia's Michael Klim, Eamon Sullivan, Brett Hawke and Ashley Callus.

"The fact that we didn't break the world record isn't a consideration at this point in time," he said.

"We knew we were going to have to race tough all the way down to the end and that's exactly what we did."

Fierce sporting rivalry

It was the first time since the 1978 Games in Edmonton that Australia has failed to win the event and makes the swimming pool a new front in a fierce sporting rivalry that already includes the cricket pitch and the rugby field.

The South Africans were still pumped up after the Proteas' astonishing world record one-day cricket victory over Australia in Johannesburg last week, with Neethling describing it as a confidence booster ahead of the pool showdown.

South African coach Dirk Lange said Thorpe and Hackett's absences had left the Australian men short of leadership while his team had an abundance in Schoeman and Neethling.

On rankings, the pair are primed to sweep through the 50-100-200m freestyle events and Lange is confident of a big swim from Mark Randall in the 1 500m.

The Australian veteran Klim said his weakened team had done well to finish 0.57 sec behind the South Africans Games record of 3min 14.97 secs.

"We've all had adversity, people don't realise," he said. "Today we've proved we can still perform when under pressure."

Schoeman said the South Africans drew inspiration on the night from another Australian sporting foe, the New Zealanders, whose male swimmers won over the crowd with a bone-juddering rendition of the haka when Kiwi Moss Burmester won the men's 200m butterfly.

"We were really motivated before the race listening to the New Zealand team doing the haka, it gave us all goosebumps and our captain was saying we're going to have to come up with something like that."

SA in Rugby Sevens quarter-finals

Meanwhile, South Africa overcame an early 26-19 defeat against Tonga to reach the quarter-finals of the rugby Sevens thanks to wins against Uganda by 63-7 and 12-10 over Samoa.

In a tough game against the Samoans, South Africa went ahead through a Mzwandile Stick try. Samoa had a Lemi try disallowed for a forward pass but then saw their pressure pay off when two South Africans were yellow-carded for high tackles.

Uale Mai scored but Samoa then lost Faatonu Fili for a deliberate knock-on and South Africa immediately notched up an unconverted try through Renfrel Dazel.

Timotea Iosua clawed a try back for the islanders but his conversion on the whistle went wide and South Africa won to seal a quarter-final berth against England.

- AFP