JOHANNESBURG – After posting a qualifying time, breaststroker Tatjana Schoenmaker has raised hopes that South Africa will have a female swimmer in the pool at the FINA Swimming World Championships for the first time since 2013.
Schoenmaker recently dipped well below the 200m breaststroke qualifying time at the Swimming SA (SSA) Grand Prix series in Stellenbosch, but will have to do so again at senior nationals in Durban in early April to secure her place.
The 19-year-old dipped below the qualifying time of 2:25.91 in the heats, before she posted a new personal best 2:24.93 taking a second-and-a-half off her previous top time.
Last year Schoenmaker posted an Olympic qualifying time in the same pool but missed the mark by 0.01 second at the trials.
“I was already with my time in the heats where I swam a 2:25, but when I hit the wall in a 2:24 it didn’t feel that fast at all, it felt like I was dying,”
“It is definitely my favourite swimming pool, every time I get there, I do really well. I would have been happy with a 2:27-low so that was definitely not on the cards.”
Schoenmaker’s time was the second fastest so far this year, but she has slipped to fourth fastest since a week ago.
“I just feel that I shouldn’t get too excited, it is still early in the season but with this time I would have made the semi-finals at the Olympics... but I’m not even close to the range for the finals,” the TuksSport swimmer said.
“There is still a lot of hard work aheadmy goals are obviously not only to reach finals, I’d like to achieve a lot more.”
Missing out on Olympic qualification left Schoenmaker dejected, with two of her former swimming partners Doug Erasmus and Jarred Crous scraping through by the same margin she fell short on.
“I never thought it affected me that much, but it took quite a lot to get excited about swimming again.
Swimming better times proves to me I can still do it,” Schoenmaker said.
“Now that I am so far below the qualifying time, I can’t miss it at nationals. The pressure to qualify for the Olympics all came down to one gala where I woke up at night thinking about the races.”
South Africa has been running on empty in terms of women’s swimming with the country’s top female Karin Buys (* ée Prinsloo) retiring from the sport in 2016.
The country had no women qualifiers at the 2015 World Championships nor the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, with the exception of Open Water ace Michelle Weber.
Schoenmaker could continue a proud women’s breaststroke tradition, following in the footsteps of the likes of global superstar Penny Heyns, who won both the 100m and 200m events in Atlanta 1996 and the bronze in Sydney 2000.
After Heyns’ retirement Suzaan van Biljon emerged as another international export, winning the 200m breaststroke at the 2008 World Short Course Championships before finishing seventh at the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Van Biljon retired for the second and final time in 2013 as the South African and continental 200m breaststroke record holder.