Johannesburg - Mbulaeni Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, the South African athletics 800m star killed in a car crash in Mpumalanga on Friday morning, has been described as a “legend” and a quiet hero.
The track star never sought the limelight and his achievements perhaps never received the recognition they deserved.
Mulaudzi retired last year with little fanfare, returning to Limpopo, where he opened an athletics academy. He was forced out at the young age of 33 by an Achilles tendon injury that he had been struggling with since 2010.
Mulaudzi had apparently been driving to a meeting with Hezekiel Sepeng when his car overturned near Emalahleni. He was just 34 years old.
Mpumalanga community safety department spokesman Joseph Mabuza said he died early on Friday when his car overturned on the R555 in the province. “He was travelling from the Ogies direction towards Emalahleni using the R555 road,” he said,
“Towards Emalahleni, there is a curve and he lost control of the vehicle, which overturned. He was the only occupant in the car.”
Mulaudzi was a multiple-world champion, an Olympic silver medallist and the first black South African athlete to be ranked at number one in the world. He was never one to brag, with Gideon Sam, the president of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee, calling him a “humble champion”.
Ryk Neethling, who won Olympic gold in the pool at the 2004 Games, told EWN Mulaudzi was a “superstar in the international athletic world. He was always quiet. But when he was on the track it all changed. His confidence came out. He didn’t receive the recognition he deserved”.
Mulaudzi first came to prominence in 2000 when he won silver in the 2000 African Championships as a teenager.
He came sixth in the 2001 World Championships and the next year took gold at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.
Some regarded him as the heir to Sepeng, the 1996 Olympic silver medallist, but Mulaudzi quietly forged his own path, becoming South Africa’s star athlete during the early part of the 21st century.
In 2003, he took bronze at the World Championships before his gold medal at the 2004 Indoor World Championships gave him the right to be called the No 1 800m runner on the planet.
Ahead of the 2004 Games in Athens, Mulaudzi had a bad run at a meet in Zurich and in the Olympic village told Sepeng, his roommate, he was considering pulling out of the competition.
Sepeng persuaded him to run and the shy man, who became a beast on the track, gave South Africa a silver medal in what was described as a “tactical final”.
He had the slowest qualifying round in the semi-final. In the final, as the Kenyans battled at the front, he sat in a pocket of runners just behind Wilson Kipketer, the world record holder. In the final sprint, Mulaudzi leaned desperately to snatch silver from Kipketer.
Silver at the 2006 World Indoor Championships followed as it did in 2008, and after losing out during the semi-finals of the Olympics in Beijing, he went to the World Championships in Berlin in 2009 with a point to prove. It was perhaps his greatest moment. Starting in the outside lane, he took the lead from the start and did not relinquish it, dictating the pace and fighting off a pull on his arm by another runner. He fell over the line, winning by a head.
It should have been the greatest of South African athletic stories, but the controversy over the Caster Semenya saga cast a shadow over the South African achievements in Berlin, particularly the matter of one country having the world title in both the men’s and women’s 800m.
“Though not the South African record holder for his event, he is regarded by many as our greatest 800m runner,” Ian Harries, a former coach, said last year.
“He was very competitive, aggressive and a tactically aware runner who thrived best over a fast race. He had incredible speed-strength endurance. I personally, think of him as a true legend of the event,” Harries said. – Additional reporting by Sapa
Sunday Independent