South Africa battles on 1st day of athletics

Published Aug 20, 2004

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Athens - South Africa's Janice Josephs began Friday with a number of firsts. First South African to compete in an Olympic heptathlon, first South African to experience competition in the Athens Olympic stadium on Friday where she was drawn in the first heat of the first track event of the first day's athletics.

With the potential assistance of running in the strongest of five heats, Josephs was first out of the blocks for the 100m hurdles, but was overwhelmed by the majority of the field to finish seventh on 13,69 significantly slower than her personal best of 13,30.

The former South African sprint champion will rely on her speed to earn the points. With 33 competitors in the event, she can be pleased a positioning 16th after the first of seven events.

However, after a total of 1878 from two events Josephs dropped to 23rd place

A mere 00,1 seconds separated Geraldine Pillay from qualifying for the second round of the women's 100m sprint. Jamaican Aleen Bailey won Pillay's heat in 11,20 seconds, with Pillay recording 11,44 seconds to finish sixth.

This ranked her in 32nd position overall, a time equalled by Finland's Johanna Manninen from heat four. With only four heats of eight allowed through to the second round, both Pillay and Manninen were eliminated, leaving 31 competitors and a maximum qualifying time of 11,43 seconds.

Only two heats, including Pillay's, faced a light headwind, which may have made the difference for the Pretoria-based athlete who has season best of 11,39 seconds.

World Junior triple jump champion Khotsa Mokoena failed to get close to the 16,96m personal best in Friday's qualifying rounds. Mokeona opened his account at 16,23m and pushed it out to 16,32m in the second jump, with a no jump for his third.

With the qualifying mark set at 17m or the top 12, it was unlikely that 19-year-old Mokoena would make the cut. Only nine jumpers, headed by Sweden's Christian Olsen broke the qualifying distance, which resulted in the 12th spot being allocated at 16,91m, a distance within Mokoena's range.

Shottist Martin Senore failed to make the final eight in the 50m rifle prone competition held on Friday afternoon. The South African scored a total of 588 points ranking him 39th out of a tightly packed 46 competitors.

His scoring series was, 97, 99, 97, 100, 96, 99. The top scorer of the preliminary round was US's Matthew Emmons with 599 points from a possible 600, losing one point in his third series.

The women's epee team failed to beat Greece in a preliminary round which would have taken them through to meet top-ranked Germany. Rachel Barlow and Natalia Tychler were able to outpoint their host country opponents in one bout each, in a match that lasted a total of 26 minutes 47 seconds and resulted in a 34-15 scoreline. South Africa entered the competition as the lowest ranked team of the nine competing countries.

In the swimming pool the SA quartet of Gerhard Zandberg, Terrence Parkin, Eugene Botes and Karl Thaning were visibly disappointed in the men's 4 x 100m medley relay, finishing eighth in the second of two heats.

Zandberg led them out in the backstroke, turning in third in a field, that included six of the top eight qualifiers, before dropping back to eighth at 50 metres. Parkin followed with a 1:03,89 breaststroke, with Botes handling the butterfly in 54.57 and Karl Thaning getting his only swim of the games in 49,25 seconds.

The foursome's time ranked them 13th overall. "This is the first time all four of us have swum together," said Thaning, clearly proud of having been given the opportunity to represent South Africa.

"We had three during the pre games meet, but never the whole four. We did our best, it's just disappointing that we couldn't go harder at them out there." - Sapa

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