And now he’s the 400m world record holder. He ran the fourth-fastest 400 meters ever at last year’s world championships and earlier this year became the only man to have run under 10 seconds for the 100, 20 seconds for the 200 and 44 seconds for the 400.
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Phyllis Francis of the United States won the first of the three semifinal heats in 50.31, holding off Stephenie Ann McPherson of Jamaica. And the underdog did all this coming from lane eight, making him the first man to win an Olympic 400m title from the outside lane.
“You are never too old to learn”, Botha, a great-grandmother of four with a neat wave of white hair, told the IAAF website of her coaching convictions – and that’s the principle she applied to turning Van Niekerk into an Olympic champion. He has since been training with the lady and that move has paid great dividends for the athlete.
“She’s an wonderful woman”, he said. “She’s played a huge role in where I am today”.
“I am still a bit amazed and I still have to pinch myself about what just happened”. But he says Wayde realised he had to go through this process in order to achieve what he needed to achieve and went through a rehabilitation programme.
If you’re just looking at Sunday night’s track meet in a vacuum, van Niekerk’s 400m performance made Bolt’s 100m look like a JV race.
Around 30,000 people watched in Toronto, Canada, as the two Olympic champions raced to determine the “fastest man in the world”. Heck, he also has the pleasure of winning an Olympic medal alongside cousin Cheslin Kolbe, bronze victor with the BlitzBoks.
“Our achievement as a team has spoken for itself and I’m grateful for her in my life”. “Sport has always been something my family does”.
Wayde is studying marketing at the University of the Free State (UFS).
“I was running blind all the way”, Van Niekerk explained.
Michael Johnson’s towering mark of 43.18sec had stood since 1999 and rarely been seriously challenged.
But Van Niekerk took it all in afterwards, hardly celebrating initially as the shock of winning gold and breaking the world record in one race hit home.
#8 The sprinter won his 400m sprint at the Olympic Games in Rio on Sunday and was very happy with his world record but one more thing that the sprinter revealed was that he is a Liverpool fan. “I thought someone was going to catch me – what’s going on, what’s going on, and it gave me motivation to keep on pushing”, he told the Associated Press. We got the win. “I have such a big responsibility to get this athlete to develop to his full potential”. Van Niekerk had less time on the first turn because he started almost halfway into it, and he had a more gradual turn to run around while the athletes on the inside lanes had a tighter turn to manage. I thank Michael Johnson for setting such a great example for us. The American had commented for the BBC, “Oh my God!”.
“I don’t think any athlete really wants to be in lane eight, but when you have it, you embrace it”, he said.
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Following Van Niekerk was a tight race between Kirani James and LaShawn Merritt.
