Cape Town - He bombed out at the South African championships last month, and now Luvo Manyonga will have to wait a bit longer to put things right.
A former junior world champion in the long jump, Manyonga was set to take part in Saturday’s second Diamond League meeting of the season in Shanghai.
It would’ve provided the 25-year-old Manyonga – who hails from Mbekweni near Paarl, but now lives in Pretoria and competes for Tuks Athletics Club – to make up for the disastrous afternoon at the SA nationals in Stellenbosch in mid-April.
A strong wind played a part, but Manyonga was totally out of rhythm on that Saturday morning and never got going, reaching a mere 6.70m to be placed 13th and last, when he had been one of the favourites for the title.
Manyonga had jumped a new personal best of 8.30m to qualify for the Olympics in March at the Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria, and it looked like he was back to his best.
But he had to watch as his great rival Ruswahl Samaai, who is also from Paarl but part of University of Johannesburg’s team, grab gold in 8.34m, beating Manyonga’s best ever effort.
Manyonga hasn’t jumped since, and was entered for Saturday’s Shanghai Diamond League, but an ankle injury has prevented him from making the trip to Asia.
“We are looking at the bigger picture with Luvo,” Tuks Athletics manager Danie Cornelius told Independent Media from Pretoria on Tuesday. “He has an ankle injury and will jump in a week’s time again.
“It is more of a preventative measure, it’s nothing serious. There’s still a long way to go to the Olympics, so we didn’t want to risk him unnecessarily. I was surprised to see him still in the starting list today for Shanghai, as we withdrew him two weeks ago already.”
That leaves Samaai as the only local long jumper for the event in China, while two other South African athletes in 400m hurdler LJ van Zyl and 800m runner Rynhardt van Rensburg will also make the trip to the Far East.
They will look to emulate the performances of Caster Semenya and Sunette Viljoen, who won in the 800m and javelin competitions respectively at the opening Diamond League meet of the season in Doha, Qatar last Friday. Discus thrower Victor Hogan had a good outing too, finishing third.
As for Manyonga, with the South African athletics season virtually over, he will have to look overseas to rediscover his touch and fine-tune preparations for the Rio Olympics.
“We will have a chat with Athletics South Africa soon about some of the overseas competitions for Luvo – there are a few possibilities that we can look at,” Cornelius said. “We will discuss it with ASA and will probably know by sometime next week what his schedule will look like going into Europe.”
@IndyCapeSport
Independent Media