SA Commonwealth swimmers claim five golds on final day

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Saturday, 09 October 2010 19:14

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Five more medals from our swimmers at Commonwealth

On the closing day of the swimming events on 9 October at the Commonwealth Games in India, SA swimmers decided they needed to prove a point. They did just that by improving the medal count by five!

The evening's events kicked off with the hotly contested Mens 50m Freestyle event. We had two swimmers in the final, Roland Schoeman and the young gun Gideon Louw. The pace was fast as you'd expect, the Canadian Brent Hayden took top spot with Roland in second and Gideon a well earned third.

Natalie had her 100m BF event, one of her favourites. She proved that she was unstoppable by leading the field by more than a body length through the first 30m. She set a quick time and was very pleased with her performance.

On to the 1500m mens final, where we had two swimmers in contention, the likes of Mark Randall and Capetonian Heerden Herman. The race was a tough one as it included the world record holder Ryan Cochrane. Heerden held onto the pace Ryan set through the 1000m mark and fought back hard in the end to close the gap slightly but just not enough for first. Mark also had his own battle on for third as he was accompanied by a British swimmers in the closing moments of the race, he unfortunately had to settle for fourth spot.

In the final event of the evening, it was to be the show down of all show downs, the 4 x 100m medley relay. Team South Africa consisted of Charl Crous setting off in the backstroke, Cameron van der Burgh second for breastroke, the young gun Chad le Clos for butterfly and Gideon Louw to bring it home for the final 100m freestyle. The race was on from the start as England lead out the backstroke in hope of opening up a gap, the Australians were in hot persuit with the South Africans close behind. The change over occured in the breastroke as South Africa moved into second as the English team dropped off. Through the butterfly stretch, positions were shuffled between the Saffa's and the English leading into the final 100m freestyle. Gideon was soon to sort matters out as he sped away to claim silver for the team behind the Aussies.

What an amazing meet for the South African swimmers, bringing home 16 of the 27 medals for team South Africa at the end of day 6! It was great to see the likes of the President of the South African Olympic Comittee, Mr Gideon Sam sitting in the crowd to witness the South Africans in all their glory.

Well done to all the Swimmers, their coaches, management and support staff. They sure do make us proud.