Perhaps the biggest disappointment came in the 400m hurdles, with the Grey College old boy, LJ van Zyl, fading badly over the last 50m of his semi-final to finish 5th and see his participation at the 2016 Games come to an end.

At 31 years old, one cannot help but feel that this was the last time we’ve seen the South African track stalwart competing at the highest level.

There was more disappointment on the track as Wenda Nel finished 6th in her 400m hurdles semi-final while Antonio Alkana finished 7th in his 110m hurdles semi-final.

In the long jump, Lynique Prinsloo didn’t make it past her qualifying group with her best jump of just 6.10m. It fell a massive 65cm short of the 6.75m needed to secure automatic qualification through to the final.

The 200m sprinter, Ananso Jobodwana, also failed to qualify for the semi-finals and following his bronze at the World Championships in Beijing, it comes as somewhat of a shock.

The only highlight of the disappointing night came in the form of South Africa’s javelin queen, Sunette Viljoen, advancing to the final of the women’s javelin with a throw of 63.54m.

While it wasn’t a medal, South Africa’s Chad Ho earned a 10th place finish in the gruelling 10km marathon swim, amazingly just 5 seconds off the gold and 2 seconds off the bronze.

Meanwhile, the world’s most famous great-grandmother, Tannie Ans Botha, the coach of our gold medallist, Wayde van Niekerk, has confirmed that they will be back in the country on 11 September.

Via sms she confirmed to OFM Sport that they are heading back to their base in Italy, and will not be back on Sunday as was expected.

She also did hit that now that Van Niekerk is the Olympic gold medallist, world champion and world record holder, they may consider looking into switching over to the 200m sprint.

Something to look forward to today is the women’s 800m heats.

South Africa’s second gold medal hopeful, Caster Semenya, will begin her campaign, and sadly once again controversial gender issues have overshadowed her ability and talent.

Caster will be in action at 16:02 this afternoon and Elroy Gelant will run in the second heat of the men’s 500m at 15:27.

Willem Coertzen will be competing in the men’s decathlon and will feature in the 100m, shot put, high jump and 400m today.

And perhaps, an interesting one to look out for, Kyle Dodd, will be competing in the BMX category. The African champion says for now his sights are on the top 16 and then perhaps a medal.

Dodd will be in action in the men’s seeding run at 19:34 this evening.

Morgan Piek/OFM News