Saluting SA sport’s Man of the Year

Wayde van Niekerk slept in his own home for the first time this week.

Having recently bought his dream house in Bloemfontein, the Olympic champion finally found the time to move in and make it his own.

These are busy times for South Africa’s outstanding sportsman of 2016.

The athletics superstar now ranks among sporting royalty, comfortably alongside eminent figures like Usain Bolt, Steph Curry and Serena Williams.

That’s what happens when you obliterate a long-standing world record held by Michael Johnson, causing the great man himself to exclaim, “That was a massacre. This young man has done something truly special.”

Bolt was the sentimental choice of voters who recently chose him as world athlete of the year, but Van Niekerk’s majestic Olympic 400m run was the moment of 2016. For South Africans who arose at around 2am to watch the spectacle from Rio, it was impossible to go back to sleep, the race instantly becoming one of those where-were-you-when questions.

Lest you forget, earlier this year, Van Niekerk also became the first man to achieve the sub-10 100m, sub-20 200m and sub-44 400m triple, a singular achievement that places him in the pantheon.

As the marketers are fond of saying, he’s “box office”, a can’t-miss star who has sponsors and corporates lined up.

“It’s been total mayhem and chaos,” says his agent Peet van Zyl, who compares the bedlam to when Oscar Pistorius was such a hot property. Van Zyl looked after the disgraced athlete’s interests too.

Van Niekerk has had to walk a tightrope between maintaining his fitness and training as an athlete with the understandable demands of corporates and assorted hangers-on who all want a piece of him. He was in Monte Carlo for the IAAF awards the other day; the phone doesn’t stop for such requests.

TThe Olympic champion has had to quickly learn about making pleasantries and glad-handing

It’s seldom easy. He returned to serious training in early November and his coach, tannie Ans Botha, made it clear that fitness came first. She understands that he is being pulled in all directions, but isn’t shy to raise an eyebrow when the fuss interferes with his training.

The Olympic champion has had to quickly learn about making pleasantries and glad-handing. He’s naturally shy and introverted and by all accounts his remarkable success hasn’t gone to his head.

 

“Sir, you know me,” he tells Van Zyl, “I’d much rather run for money than talk for it.”

His agent attributes this modesty to both his humble upbringing and his place in the “bubble of Bloemfontein” that protects him.

What Van Niekerk doesn’t want to be is a one-hit wonder who quietly drifts away. He might have climbed Everest in an Olympic sense, but his goals remain stellar. One of them is to defend his world 400m title at the world championship in London next year.

London will also mark the final curtain for Bolt, a big fan of Van Niekerk, and may well symbolise a passing of the baton; the poster child of athletics anointing his successor, who is just 24.

Going sub-43 for the 400m may seem other-worldly, but Johnson himself believes that Van Niekerk could do it. Running more 200m races could be a means to getting there and Van Niekerk is dead keen to do so.

His 19.94 best is freakishly quick and presumably Frankie Fredericks’ Africa record (19.68) is an early target.

Unfortunately, the world championship schedule won’t allow him to double up for the 400m and 200m, but he might have a crack at the SA championship in April. He and teammate Akani Simbine, the Olympic 100m finalist, joke about taking one another on in the 200m, an intriguing prospect that would surely pack in the crowds.

But it might not happen if Athletics SA, not the most progressive bunch around, don’t shift the date of nationals as they clash with the IAAF World Relays that take place in the Bahamas. SA could put together a potent team for the 4x100m, with Van Niekerk part of the mix.

The point is that Van Niekerk wants to run in South Africa. And South Africans would clamour to watch him.

We should all salute our splendid, sensational hero. He’s pure gold in every sense. – © Sunday Tribune