Pretoria - Considered one of the hardest-working athletes in the country, joint South African women’s 100m record-holder Carina Horn is willing to risk life and limb to dip below 11 seconds in the short-sprint event.
After equaling the 25-year old national record of 11.06 seconds held by Evette de Klerk in 2015, Horn came close to that time again at last year’s African Athletics Championships in Durban where she finished in second place.
Horn has been a model of consistency positing nine of her top 10 times in 2015 and 2016 earning her starts at some of the top races around the world.
She produced one of her best results when she bagged the bronze medal at the Monaco Diamond League meeting in July sharing a podium with Dutch sensation Dafne Schippers and Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown.
Bolstered by the second fastest time of her career from the African Championships, she went into the Rio Olympic Games with the hope of making it into the final of the global showpiece.
She fell just short, reaching a semi-final with a time of 11.32s and missing out on a spot in the final when she finished sixth in her race with a time of 11.20s.
Flirting with a sub-11 100m time but ultimately missing the mark, Horn is stepping up her efforts to chip away at the fractions to make history in 2017.
“It is that sub-11 that takes you to the next level and that is what I want to do. That is the plan, and I am looking at the Shanghai Diamond League which is in May,” Horn, a TuksSport athlete, said ahead of her departure for a training camp in Spain.
“It all depends on how well training goes but I would like to race in all the Diamond Leagues so we will see how it works out.”
This year Horn is leaving nothing to chance withdrawing from a 33-member national relay preparation squad while she has also decided not to race on the European indoors circuit.
“We decided to do indoors this year and instead focus on training, so I’ll put in a longer base to focus on the 100m,
“The main focus is to be at my best in London (IAAF World Championships), but it can happen at any race before that.”
Horn and Austrian coach Rainer Schopf have made a few adjustments to her training regime hoping it would further improve her times.
“Over the first month my coach and I had a few disagreements over the new things we introduced because I am not a person who likes drastic changes when I know something works,” she said.
“But your muscles get used to a way of doing things so we have to go to the next level to make improvements, you can’t do the same things and expect to run faster.
“At this level, you have to do something different because it is the small changes that makes a difference. We are looking at improving fractions so it is the small things that count.”
The Tenerife training camp will also be the first time Horn would be in a camp environment which she hopes would give her an extra edge.
“I would like to race in Madrid again where I ran my personal best,” Horn said.