Johannesburg – SA wrapped up their 2015 IPC Athletics World Championships campaign with a silver medal on the final day of action in Doha, Qatar on Saturday.
It was Paralympic veteran Fanie van der Merwe who boosted the team’s tally to 17 medals when he took second spot in the men’s T37 100-metre final.
He ran a season’s best 11.55 seconds as it took a world record 11.46 from Russia’s Andrey Vdovin to wrest gold from the South African. In the same race Charl du Toit took fifth spot in 11.73.
South Africa only had four athletes in action on the final day with the other two athletes also involved in sprint action, the T38 100m final.
Here it was another season’s best from Dyan Buis which saw him narrowly miss out on another medal as he took fourth spot in 11.51.
The win went to China’s Jianwen Hu in 11.08 with countryman Wenjun Zhou just 0.14sec ahead of Buis.
The other South African in the same race was Union Sekailwe and he ended seventh in 12.01.
After 10 days of action in the desert city, the South African team of 22 ended 13th on the medals table with 17 medals (four gold, eight silver and five bronze)
That’s one medal less than they brought back from the last IPC World Championships in Lyon, France two years ago. Encouraging though is that they improved their position on the table to 13th from 20th in France.
China topped the 2015 table with 85 medals from Russia (69) and the United States (39).
– ANA