Wayde van Niekerk proved again on Tuesday why he is truly one of the stars of international athletics when he won the 100 metres at the EA Classic Meeting in Velenje, Slovenia in a time of 9.94s.

His winning time is 0.04s faster than his previous best, more importantly, is the fact that he did so at sea level so he can now claim to be an “honest member” of the sub ten second club in the 100 metres. He ran his previous best of 9.98s in Bloemfontein.

“I am very pleased,” said Van Niekerk in an IAAF interview. “It is my best time and I am glad the race played out the way I wanted it to. This bodes well for my two main distances the 200m and 400m.”

Ten days ago in Kingston, Van Niekerk set a new South African record in the 200m when he clocked 19.84s. Van Niekerk is currently the fastest athlete over 200m and 6th fastest athlete over the 100m.

Tuesday night’s 100 metres was an all-South African affair with Emile Erasmus (Tuks) finishing second in 10.12s and Henricho Bruintjies (Tuks) third in 10.14s. It is the second best time of Erasmus’s career.

“I cannot complain as to how my race played out. I did not have the best of starts but I made up for it in the driving phase. What excites me is that I can feel how I am getting stronger over the last 40 metres each time I raced. I tried to keep up with Wayde but the “400m Man” is a class act. As a sprinter, he has got unbelievable stamina.”

Erasmus is not one to speculate what could have been but he was slightly hampered in his sprint. Just as he got out of his starting block he could feel his shoe lace started to loosen.

“There was nothing I could do about. I just blocked it out in my mind and kept running.”

Article adapted from Tuks Sport.

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