Africa-Press – South-Africa. Just as history seemed to cruelly repeat itself by denying Tshepo Tshite a spot in a second straight world championship 1,500m final, the fates smiled upon the diminutive South African in Tokyo on Monday night and ushered him into the medal race.
In other action, Marioné Fourie crashed out of her 100m hurdles semifinal at the showpiece, but elsewhere a worrying trend is developing with South Africa’s second-tier qualifiers.
The initial results from the 1,500m showed that Tshite, needing to finish in the top six of his semifinal to advance to Wednesday’s final, had missed out by seven thousandths of a second after drifting out to the fourth lane in the final charge for the line.
He crossed the line seventh in 3min 36.93sec, the same time given to sixth-placed Briton Neil Gourley, which forced officials to drill into the thousandths to separate them.
History had seemingly repeated itself — at the previous showpiece in Budapest in 2023 Tshite lost a final spot to Gourley by one hundredth of a second.
But then an appeal was lodged, American Cole Hocker was disqualified and Tshite was promoted to sixth spot and into the final, making him the first South African to reach a 1,500m final since Moscow 2013, where Johan Cronje took bronze.
Fourie was in the race until she clipped the seventh hurdle and then hit the eighth so hard that she lost her flow, slowed almost to a stop and pushed over the ninth barrier, causing her to be disqualified — not that she was going to recover after that.
That was only her third race back since breaking her right shoulder at Hengelo three months ago, an injury which robbed her of training time and racing confidence.
The hurdles is all about finding rhythm that normally starts months before a championships.
“I was out for 10 weeks and it took a lot out of my training. It took a lot of speed out of my training as well.”
And Fourie also lacked the concentration she needed.
“I was focusing on them to catch them, so that was on me,” she said. “I need to learn from my mistakes, but these things happen.”
The slowest qualifying time for the final was 12.53, which was within her 12.49 national record.
Tshite and Fourie were among 20 local athletes who had booked their spots in Japan by achieving automatic standards.
Not all the automatic qualifiers have advanced beyond the first round. The latest casualty was Rogail Joseph in the women’s 400m hurdles heats on Monday morning.
But so far not a single athlete who qualified on world rankings — the lower tier of qualification — has managed to get beyond the opening round.
On Monday night long-jumper Cheswill Johnson delivered a best jump of 7.55m for an overall ranking of 32.43m and 20 places behind the last qualifier.
Sabelo Dhlamini was unable to find another gear on the second half of his 400m hurdles heat on Monday night, finishing fifth in 49.50 to miss out on a spot in the semifinals by more than half a second.
South Africa has had two medallists in this event over the years — Llewellyn Herbert in 1997 and LJ van Zyl in 2011 — but 14 years have passed without a single man in a final.
The men’s 110m hurdles saw a full complement of three South Africans, all of them world ranking qualifiers and all of them unable to get out of the first round.
John Adesola and Mondray Barnard both ended sixth in 13.57 in separate heats, while Antonio Alkana finished seventh in 13.64.
The slowest time qualifier went 13.51, a time that all three have beaten this season.
In the women’s pole vault qualifying round on Monday morning, Miré Reinstorf joined male counterpart Kyle Rademeyer and high-jumper Brian Raats by failing to clear the bar once.
There was a time when Athletics South Africa (ASA) refused to pick second-tier qualifiers, but that changed after the election of the board under president James Moloi in 2021.
That is surely the right policy, because coming up short on the biggest stages of the sport is how youngsters learn.
Jo-Ane du Plessis went to the last world championships in 2023 on the world rankings and was the only South African field athlete to reach a final.
Then the javelin thrower went to the Paris Olympics last year, also on world ranking, and won a surprise silver medal.
But one third into the Tokyo spectacle, South Africa’s world ranking qualifiers have yet to come to the party.
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