Johannesburg – It’s last-chance saloon for South Africa’s four Rio Olympics open-water hopefuls as they try to seal spots at the Olympic Marathon Swimming qualifying event in Setúbal, Portugal, this weekend.
No South African swimmers managed to qualify at last year’s FINA World Aquatic Championships in Kazan, Russia where the first 10 men and women gained automatic qualifying.
Saturday’s women’s race and Sunday’s men’s race, both over 10km, is the final chance with nine slots left open in the respective races and South Africa have two men and two women in action.
The women’s race sees Durban duo Michelle Weber and Carmen le Roux chasing that spot while the men’s event has 2008 Olympian Chad Ho and 2012 Olympian Troy Prinsloo in action.
Le Roux, 18, shed some light on her journey, telling Road to Rio 2016: “I started swimming when I was 5 years old and for the last six years I have been training with Alisdair Hadfield at Action Swim Academy.
“Alisdair’s programme and coaching has formed me into a long distance swimmer. At 16, I went to my first international event which was Junior Open water World Champs in Hungary 2014 where I placed eighth in the 5km.
“I’ve been to a few other international events since. The last few years it has always been a challenge between Michelle, my sister Clarice and myself in all the open water events in SA where I have won a few races.”
Weber, who underwent a heart operation a few years back to correct a cardiac problem is also optimistic: “I’m very excited to race this weekend. My fingers are crossed to come in the top nine.
“I’ve been working extremely hard and have just come off an altitude training camp in Doha with national coach Graham Hill and some of the Olympic qualifiers (Chad le Clos, Myles Brown, Calvyn Justus and Kevin Paul). It was very tough training for two weeks.”
As for Ho, who won the 5km open water event at last year’s championships he’s quietly confident.
“Since World Champs things have been going really well, I’ve put in a lot of hard work and hours but nothing much has changed in terms of training sets,” said Ho.
“I’ve only raced once internationally since then which was the World Cup leg in Abu Dhabi. I’m feeling good but don’t want to be over confident.”
Of the four South Africans, Prinsloo had the shortest travel to Setubal as he’s been based in Dubai for the last two years.
“I’m the head of aquatics at Fit Republik, the biggest multi-sporting facility in the Middle East,’ he told Road to Rio 2016.
“I’ve been here since 2014 so haven’t raced internationally for a long time. I was training last year but only started to pick my training up in September of last year. This will be my first major international open water race since 2013 world champs so I’m definitely going in as an underdog.”
– ANA