Cape Town - After Akani Simbine’s record-breaking performance at altitude, the next Athletics South Africa Night Series event will provide middle-distance runners a chance to post quick times at sea level in Cape Town.
The second leg of the four-part Night Series will take place at the Green Point Stadium next Tuesday, March 22.
The first meet saw Simbine register a new national 100-metre record of 9.96 seconds, which was one one-hundredth of a second faster than the previous mark of 9.97 shared between Simbine and Henricho Bruintjies.
But such fast sprint times are unlikely at the coast, although ASA said in a statement on Tuesday that there will be 100m races for both men and women on March 22.
Bruintjies and 200m SA record-holder Anaso Jobodwana probably won’t make it back in time for the Green Point meet as they are part of the South African team for the World Indoor Championships in Portland, Oregon in the United States from Thursday to Sunday this week.
Top long-jumpers Ruswahl Samaai and Zarck Visser are also in the SA team for Portland.
While ASA are yet to announce a full line-up of athletes for the Green Point meet, they have confirmed that SA 400m hurdles record-holder LJ van Zyl will participate, and there will be a much-anticipated showdown in the women’s event between world championship finalist Wenda Nel and 18-year-old Youth Olympic Games champion Gezelle Magerman, who matriculated from La Rochelle Girls High School in Paarl last year.
There will also be both men’s and women’s 800m races at Green Point, which could see Caster Semenya returning to her favourite event. Olympic silver medallist Semenya recorded a personal best of 51.47 seconds in the 400m at the North West provincial championships at the weekend, which was actually a qualifying time for the Rio Olympics.
She has said in recent times that she will run in the hope of regaining her best form for the Olympics, and it seems that Semenya is peaking at the right time.
“We saw some explosive action from the nation’s top sprinters at the first meeting of this exciting new series,” said ASA president Aleck Skhosana. “We hope they will display their impressive speed again in Cape Town. But as the event is at sea level, we also hope the country’s top middle-distance runners will make use of the opportunity to run fast times and qualify for major international championships.”
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