Sunette Viljoen may only be ranked sixth in 2016, but on Tuesday, she proved that she is a serious contender for a javelin medal at the Rio Olympics.
The South African champion, whose national record stands at a superb 69.35m, has not been at her absolute best this year, but has the temperament to excel on the big stage.
The 32-year-old Viljoen, who is at her fourth Olympics, just missed out on a medal at the 2012 London Games when she finished in fourth position with a 64.53.
That performance was especially disappointing as Viljoen had thrown her national record just two months before the final.
But she made up for it at last year’s world championships in Beijing when she clinched the bronze medal with a 65.79m effort.
And despite her best throw in 2016 being 65.14m – which she produced in winning a Diamond League event in Doha in May – Viljoen came up with the goods in the Olympic qualifying round on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning SA time) at the Joao Havelange Olympic Stadium.
With a tough automatic qualifying mark of 63.00m in place, and/or the top 12 going through to the final, Viljoen needed to get going quickly as each athlete only received three attempts to qualify.
But she didn’t waste any time, finding good rhythm and speed with her very first throw to record a distance of 63.54m. That meant her work was done for the night, and she could rest up for Thursday night’s final (Friday 2.10am SA time).
Viljoen was matched by Belarussian Tatsiana Khaladovich, who threw 63.78m in her first attempt. Croatia’s Sara Kolak (64.30m) and Lyu Huihui of China (63.28m) were the only other automatic qualifiers from the first group.
The second group included medal contenders such as 2016 world leader and defending Olympic champion Barbora Spotakova of the Czech Republic (64.65m), Germany’s Linda Stahl (63.95m) and Madara Palameika of Latvia (63.03m).
But the performance of the night came from Poland’s 20-year-old Maria Andrejczyk, who shattered her national record and set a new 2016 world-leading mark of 67.11m.
So, it is set to be an almighty battle for all three medals in the final on Thursday night (Friday 2.10am SA time).
Meanwhile, SA long jump champion Lynique Prinsloo didn’t have the best of experiences at her first Olympic Games as she was unable to advance to the final.
Prinsloo, who qualified for Rio with a season’s best of 6.78m in Polokwane in April, needed to jump 6.75m to go through automatically to the final or finish among the top 12.
But it didn’t work out for the University of Johannesburg athlete as Prinsloo opened up with a 5.96m, but then had a no-jump in her second round. She had it all to do with her final attempt, and could only muster 6.10m.
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