He has the fastest season’s best in the field, but LJ van Zyl knows he will face a real test in the 400m hurdles at Thursday’s Diamond League meet in Stockholm.
A world-class field will feature Van Zyl up against current world champion Nicholas Bett of Kenya and multiple former world champions and Olympic medallists such as Javier Culson of Puerto Rico, as well as the American trio of Kerron Clement, Bershawn Jackson and Michael Tinsley.
While another US athlete in Johnny Dutch has set the pace this year with times of 48.10, which he ran last Saturday in Jamaica, and 48.36, Van Zyl is joint-second alongside Japanese hurdler Keisuke Nozawa on 48.67.
The South African champion produced his time at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava, Czech Republic on May 20, but a “stiff back” kept him out of last week’s Diamond League meeting in Oslo.
But now he’s ready to take on the world’s leading hurdlers in his final run before the African Championships at the Kings Park Athletics Stadium in Durban from June 22-26. “I had a stiff back due to a ‘weight vest’ that I had trained with,” Van Zyl told Independent Media from Stockholm on Wednesday.
“That’s why I decided to rather play it safe and get myself ready (for Stockholm). It will be my last race before Durban.
“I’ve managed to run into good form (with that time in Ostrava), but I am just going to run the race as it happens in Stockholm as we have another strong field. I will run my own race until the 300m mark, and I will race whoever is with me over the last 100m.”
But unfortunately for Van Zyl and the rest of the field, light rain and cold weather is being forecast for the Swedish capital on Thursday, which usually makes life really difficult for the hurdlers.
That is what former SA champion Cornel Fredericks experienced in Lucerne, Switzerland on Tuesday night when he finished in third place in the 400m in cold, windy conditions in a time of 50.15, well off an Olympic qualifying mark of 49.40.
There is a tight race for the three places for the Rio Olympics, with Van Zyl, Lindsay Hanekom and Le Roux Hamman all having produced qualifying times, while Fredericks feels that he can still reach the mark before the July 11 cut-off date.
But for Van Zyl, he would also want to send out a warning to Bett ahead of the African Champs. The Kenyan star hasn’t quite found his rhythm yet in 2016, with a season’s best of just 49.31 – well short of his personal best of 47.79 he ran in winning the gold medal at last year’s world championships in Beijing.
The 30-year-old Van Zyl is the only South African competing in Stockholm on Thursday, with his race scheduled to take place at 8.03pm, and it will be broadcast live on SuperSport channel 206.
@IndyCapeSport - Independent Media