Africa-Press – South-Africa. Double sprint champion Bayanda Walaza had to settle for the 4x100m silver on Sunday afternoon as South Africa wrapped up their World Student Games campaign by claiming three last medals at the weekend.
In the morning rowers Kat Williams and Courtney Westley secured silver in the women’s pair, winning the country’s only medal outside swimming and athletics. And javelin-thrower Jana van Schalkwyk took bronze in the women’s event on Saturday night with a distance of 56.73m.
The nation ended seventh on the medals table with six gold, five silver and eight bronze, though they finished fourth on the athletics medals table and fifth in the swimming standings.
An untidy final handover from Mthi Mthimkulu to Walaza cost the Mzansi flyers as they ended second behind Korea in the final athletics event of the showpiece.
Walaza, the 100m and 200m champion at the Universiade, went into the relay expected to make it three sprint golds, but just when it seemed they were going to make it, the South Africans came unstuck.
Kyle Zinn, fifth in the 100m, got off to a good start, with Retshidisitswe Mlenga and Mthimkulu advancing the baton at the front of the race.
But Mthimkulu failed to find Walaza’s hand first up and the time they lost executing the handover gave the flawless Koreans a lead that couldn’t be closed.
The Koreans clocked 38.50 sec with Walaza following in 38.80, which was still quicker than the 38.85 they had run in the semifinals on Saturday to take pole position.
Williams, a 2023 under-23 world championship bronze medallist in the single sculls, and Westley finished strongly in the women’s pair, crossing the line second in 7 min 43.97 sec, just more than a second behind the Lithuanian pair in 7:42.96.
They were nearly five seconds behind with 500m to go, but they delivered a lightning final split of 1 min 54.36 sec — the fastest 500m of the 2km — to narrow the gap drastically.
The Lithuanians were a classy outfit. Kamilė Kralikaitė, an A finalist at the 2024 Paris Olympics, won world under-23 gold in the same class in 2023 and took silver the year before. Her partner Ugne Juzenaite had won bronze in the double sculls at last year’s world under-23 championships.
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