Children of former leading South African stars of track and field have been figuring prominently in athletics competitions in recent years.
Two very good examples are Jacques Freitag, current World High Jump champion, and Alwyn Myburgh, Olympic 400m Hurdles finalist in Athens last year.
Freitag, who boasts a hat trick of gold medals at World championships - senior, junior and youth - since 1999, is the son of a former South African women’s High Jump champion.
Myburgh, World Student Games champion in the 400m Hurdles in 2001, is the oldest son of Hugo and Hybre Myburgh who were national champions in the same event during the seventies. The latter also featured in the Pentathlon with the High Jump, 100, 200 and 400m Hurdles her best events and set numerous RSA records during an impressive career.
There are many other examples.
The South African team to the 2005 World Youth Championships in Morocco will have two similar cases in its midst. The two, both girls who were born in 1989, are Eugenie Wicksell, who will compete in the 400 metres and Christy Coetzee who has been selected for the 100 metres.
In both events the global standard is extremely high but they are bright prospects who will gain invaluable experience. Wicksell has a best time of 55.90 while Coetzee has clocked 11.91 (wind), 24.69 (200m) and has also registered a personal best of 5.88m in the long jump.
Wicksell, who will only turn 16 in September, is the oldest of two girls of Ray and Ilze Wicksell who figured quite prominently in the late seventies and eighties. Ray was an American international who settled in South Africa about 16 years ago while Ilze made history at Stellenbosch in March 1983 when she became the first South African, and also African woman, who broke the 2-minute barrier in the 800 metres. Running barefoot, she clocked 1:59.39 and still holds the SA 1000m record of 2:37.2 that was established about six weeks before her feat over 800m.
During the 1976-1992 isolation period of South African athletics Ilze never had any opportunities to test herself against the world elite whilst she was at her best. After South Africa’s reinstatement by the IAAF in 1992 she did represent her country in the African Championships but unfortunately the opportunity came to late in her career.
Coetzee’s mother, in her athletics days known as Pauline Craven, was an accomplished long jumper who set her first national senior record of 6.20m in May 1967 at the age of 16 at a meeting in Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe).
She bettered her own mark again at the national championships three years later but in a most thrilling contest on the day the record was beaten more than once and she eventually had to settle for second place. Her career closed with a Pb of 6.30m. Pauline officially represented South Africa on a tour to Europe in 1968.
Another member of the team and a strong candidate for a medal in the shot and discus, Simoné du Toit, has two coaches. Her dad, Boesman du Toit, a former provincial rugby player, handles the shot put side of affairs while her discus coach is a former national record holder and international representative in 1966 and 1968, Letitia Malan-Muller. She set her career best of 51.58m in 1970.
Gert le Roux for the IAAF
