Not a happy day for SA athletes

2008-07-19 16:46

Johannesburg - The fourth Golden League athletics meeting of 2008 in Paris is not one the South Africans will care to remember. All three former world junior champions, LJ van Zyl (2002), Godfrey Mokoena (2004) and Robert Oosthuizen (2006) failed to finish among the top three in their events on Friday evening.

Van Zyl, Commonwealth, African and SA 400m hurdles champion, was the best of the three but he did not come close to producing the same brilliance with which he won his event in the Athens Grand Prix on Sunday when he set the third fastest time in the world this year.

It was a clash of most of the current giants of the event but the Pretoria athlete lost contact between the 200 and 300m marks and failed to produce his normal fast kick over the final 100m. He finished fifth in 48.98 sec. whereas his time in Greece was 48.22 sec.

The race, which was billed as a showdown between the two Americans, world champion Kerron Clement and Olympic champion Bershawn Jackson, was all but that. The burly Clement won easily in 48.33 sec with Danny McFarlane, a veteran from Jamaica second in 48.71 sec. and Angelo Taylor, another American Olympic champion (2000) third in 48.91 sec. Jackson managed 48.92 sec in fourth place.

Mokoena, although jumping just over eight metres regularly in recent meetings, once again struggled with his run-up and after his usual slow start, eventually finished fifth with a distance of 8.04m. He seems to make a habit of getting rid of his coaches. He reportedly did so again now only a month before the Olympics and it is not really a surprise that he fails to live up to his talent.

Irving Saladino of Panama won the long jump with 8.31m with two Saudi athletes, Hussein Tahee Al Sabee (8.25m) and Mohamed Al Khuwalidi (8.09) second and third.

Javelin star Robert Oosthuizen, who made sensational progress during the last three years, hopefully also got a wake-up call before Beijing when he only managed 76.09m and a sixth place. It was one of his worst performances since entering the senior ranks. Vadim Vasilevskis of Latvia won with an impressive 85.61m from world leader, Jarrod Bannister of Australia with 84.76m.

- SAPA