Cape Town - She’s conquered the 800m, but can Caster Semenya do the same in the 400m? The Olympic champion will begin her international journey in the shorter distance at the Diamond League final in Brussels on Friday.
The 25-year-old from Limpopo has said previously that she wants to tackle the 400m and 1 500m in future, but that her focus at the Rio Olympics was solely on the two-lap event to ensure that she wins gold.
Semenya achieved her goal, and even ran a South African record of 1:55.28 at the Olympic Stadium to add the gold to her silver from the 2012 London Games.
She followed it up with victory in the overall Diamond League race in the 800m event when she clinched the title in Zurich last week to claim $40 000, ahead of Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba.
It’s been a dream few months, but Semenya took to Facebook this week to express her feelings about the fact that the most memorable season of her career is coming to an end when she lines up in the 400m at the Memorial van Damme meet at the Boudewijn Stadium on Friday night at 8.22pm South African time.
“Almost time for my last race of the season... Normally one should be excited, but this was a great season. Watching it coming to an end gives me mixed emotions,” Semenya said.
She won the triple at the SA championships in April by taking the 400m, 800m and 1 500m titles over two days, and clocked a new personal best of 50.74 seconds in the 400. But the level of competition will be much higher in Brussels as Semenya will come up against a field where only three of the eight athletes have run slower than her.
To be fair, though, Semenya hasn’t been challenged at this distance in her career, and could easily run a sub-50 time as the likes of Olympic bronze medallist Shericka Jackson will headline a field that includes American Natasha Hastings (fourth in Rio) and three other Rio finalists – Stephenie Ann McPherson (Jamaica), Ukraine’s Olha Zemlyak and Italy’s Libania Grenot.
And while it may be her last race of 2016, Semenya will use her outing to gauge whether she can realistically chase a double gold at next year’s world championships in London in August.
She is in fine form at the moment, having run times of 1:56.44 in Zurich last Thursday and 1:55.68 two days later in an IAAF World Challenge event in Berlin, which was just four-tenths off her SA record that she set in Rio.
Other South African athletes in action in Brussels on Friday night will be Olympic long jump silver medallist Luvo Manyonga (8.45pm), 100m Rio semi-finalist Carina Horn (8.13pm) and 400m hurdler Wenda Nel (8.04pm).