Syster officially SA's best
2004-03-26 21:17
Cape Town - The 28-year-old Potchefstroom athlete Ian Syster is now officially South Africa's top road athlete, according to the latest world rankings of the International Association of Athletics Federation, IAAF.
Syster has also talked for the first time about the apparent discord between him and Gert Thys, the SA marathon record holder.
"Gert dreams of gold in the Olympic marathon in Athens. It's also my dream," says Syster.
"I learnt a lot from him. But there comes a time when you must be on your own to do your own thing," Syster explained. He's not training with Thys anymore.
Syster was very happy with the 12th place on the IAAF's rankings for road athletes. Hendrick Ramaala, also of South Africa, is in 13th place, but there's no sign of Thys's name anywhere.
The times clocked in marathons carry a lot of weight, but Thys' winning time of 2 hours 7 min 6 seconds in Seoul recently was just too late to be taken into account.
This is the fastest time in the world so far this year, but Syster says "I want to try and better this when I run in the London marathon on April 18."
Syster says his training times indicate that he can better 2:06. It's obvious that he wants to better Thys's SA record of 2:06:33.
Ten fastest athletes
A revolution started in marathon times clocked last year. The average time of the ten fastest athletes in 2003 was 2:06:42.
The fastest marathon debut was by Evans Rutto of Kenia in Chicago last year in a time of 2:05:50. His countryman, Paul Tergat, clocked a world record time of 2:04:55 in Berlin later.
Syster says if "the pace is right," he expects to record a very quick time in London and then he'll focus exclusively on the Olympic marathon, which takes placed in Athens in August.
"I definitely bear Gert no grudge. We have to go our own way and focus on what's important to us," Syster says.
The top athletes on the new list of rankings for road athletes are:
(1)Stefano Baldini (It) 1 303 points; (2) Wilson Onsare ((Ken) 1 302; (3) Martin Lel (Ken) 1 298; (4) Julio Rey (Sp), Michael Rotich (Ken) 1 289; (6) Paul Tergat (Ken) 1 286; (7)Fabiano Joseph (Tan) 1 278; (8) Yusuf Songoka (Ken), Sammy Korir (Ken) 1 262; (10) John Yuda (Tan) 1 261; (11)Martin Sulle (Tan) 1 258; (12) Ian Syster (SA) 1 256; (13) Hendrick Ramaala (SA) 1 255; (14) William Kipsang (Ken), Jaouad Gharib (Mar) 1 254.