The SA men’s 4x100m team that won silver at the Paris Olympics needs to step it up at World Relays in China this weekend, says Bradley Nkoana, who ran the third leg at the Stade de France in 2024.
He was talking at the relay camp in Joburg on Tuesday before the bulk of the team — which features several members of the national under-20 squad from 2024 — flies to Guangzhou on Wednesday.
“We’re going to have to step up at some point,” Nkoana said. “We won’t just relax and be like ‘oh, we won a silver medal, we’re entitled to win another one’.
“We have to step up our game and show up and be the best on the day.”
Nkoana is one of three survivors from Paris, alongside Bayanda Walaza and Akani Simbine.
The trio competed with Shaun Maswanganyi in France and with Benjamin Richardson at the 2024 World Relays, where they won Olympic qualification.
The men’s 4x100m and 4x400m teams as well as the women’s 4x400m and the mixed 4x400m teams will be trying to win qualification for the world championships in Tokyo in September.
It’s all or nothing for the women’s and mixed outfits, but the two men’s teams will have breathing room if they fail. The top 14 teams will secure berths in Japan, with the next two fastest making up the 16 teams that will do battle at the world championships.
The men’s 4x100m team are the third-fastest team in the qualifying window so far, and should the two quickest, the US and Canada, be part of the 14, SA will be the fastest side in contention for two places.
The men’s 4x400m team is fifth-fastest, behind the US, Botswana, Britain and Belgium. They would need at least three of those teams to finish in the top 14 in China to have a chance of making it to Japan.
Zeney Geldenhuys, captain of the women’s relay teams, is confident the women can make the final and challenge for silverware after they broke the national 4x400m record at Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria in April, clocking 3 min 28.30 sec.
“I think when we are in a very competitive environment we will automatically go faster. [The record performance] was our first race for the year and we broke the SA record. We didn’t even think we were going to do that.
“The team manager told us just to qualify [for World Relays], a 3:30 would be good enough.”
Miranda Coetzee, the national 400m champion, agrees.
“That was like the start of the season and most of us haven’t done like speed or anything. So, yeah, with the training sessions from there until now I feel like there’s a lot more in the tank.”
Coetzee, Shirley Nekhubui and Gardeo Isaacs potentially have the unenviable task of running two relays — the women’s and men’s 4x400m races and the mixed 4x400m.
Nekhubui wasn’t fazed.
“I’m trained like that and I enjoy running. I need to just only be there in the track and just try to push everyone to win and make the final and come back with a medal.”
The team of 19 athletes includes five who competed at the under-20 world championships in Lima last year.
The most notable are Walaza, the 100m and 200m world champion, and Udeme Okon, the 400m title-holder.
Nkoana and 400m hurdler Hannah van Niekerk returned from Peru with bronze medals while Precious Molepo was also a member of the team.
And none of them are the youngest — that honour goes to 17-year-old schoolboy Leendert Koekemoer.
