No track blues for South African athletes

South African athletes will get to sink their spikes into the same type of surface they will run on in Rio after Tuks Athletics revealed its newly laid track in Pretoria.

Johannesburg - South African athletes will get to sink their spikes into the same type of surface they will run on at the Rio Olympic Games in August after Tuks Athletics revealed its newly laid track in Pretoria on Monday.

The two-tone blue Mondo track came at a price tag of approximately R10 million and is the home of the country’s top Olympic talent, including South African record holder Akani Simbine and LJ van Zyl.

Tuks athletics manager Danie Cornelius said this was the latest track surface made by Mondo which is similar to what would be used at the Olympic Games.The track will officially be opened with a meet on June 11 which will also give athletes an opportunity to prepare for the Africa Championships in Durban 10 days later.

”Because we are high above sea-level, it should benefit the sprinters and the horizontal jumpers but it would not affect the distance athletes negatively,” Cornelius said.”We already have interest from a lot of people and we will have to manage the track in such a way that our athletes will benefit from it.”

I have spoken to ASA (Athletics SA) regarding the preparation of our athletes going to the Olympics and it is the ideal track for this,” he added.This is the same venue where disgraced sprinter Simon Magakwe became the first South African to dip below 10 seconds at the South African Championships in 2014 when he clocked a new national record of 9.98.

It is now the home of Simbine, who finished behind Magakwe on that day with a time of 10.02 before breaking and sharing the record with Henricho Bruintjies.Earlier this year Simbine become the sole holder of the national record when he posted a world-leading time of 9.96 seconds at Pilditch in Pretoria.

Cornelius said the previous track had to be replaced despite two national records tumbling here in recent years including Van Zyl’s one-lap hurdles mark of 47.66 seconds in 2011.Simbine, who pulled his hamstring at the South African Championships in Stellenbosch in April but was back in training with his season back on track.

”The injury is sorted, I am back to running and everything is going well, so I am positive at the moment with the way things are going and the fact that I wasn’t as badly injured as I thought I was,” Simbine said.South African women’s 400m hurdles ace Wenda Nel was looking forward to run on the new track where she will be training.

”I haven’t run on it yet but it feels nice, I am excited to race on it and we will see what happens while I hope to train on it before Africa Champs,” Nel said.Nel already started her international campaign at the Doha Diamond League last week where she finished in fourth place with a time of 55.17.

The Star