There was a disqualification and two falls in the men’s sprint events at the inaugural Varsity Athletics meeting in Stellenbosch on Monday.
The first men’s race of the evening was the 110 metre hurdles and it was an incredibly tightly contested affair between Andre Storm from NWU-Pukke and Kobus Moolman from UP-Tuks but Andre Storm snuck it right at the death in a time of 14.13 seconds. The race started with a bit of drama when Christo Van Eeden from NMMU tripped over one of the first hurdles but that did not distract the front runners who pulled away from the rest of the field. It was a nail-biter of a finish but the NWU-Pukke athlete snuck it by 0.05 seconds from Moolman to pick up the valuable nine points for his university.
The men’s 100 metres started with a disqualification for TUT’s Lebakeng Sesele for a false start. A disqualification in Varsity Athletics is an automatic disqualification which meant that there were only seven athletes in the final. The race got off without a glitch and Brent Stevens made an early go at it but ran out of steam towards the end and that saw Simon Magakwe, Akani Simbini and Gideon Trotter pull away but it was Magakwe from NWU-Pukke who had too much speed for the other two athletes and he won the race in a time of 9.90 seconds The timing for the 100 metres was taken by hand because there was an issue with the electronic timing. So the times will seem a lot faster than they actually were.
The men’s 400 metres was a star studded affair with the national champion Wayde Van Niekerk going up against Olympic 800m silver medalist Nijel Amos. Van Niekerk was coming off winning the national championships on the weekend and he kept up that form when he took a fairly comfortable victory in a time of 45.89 seconds. There was some drama right at the end as Amos was pushing to try and take the victory but he was unable to kick and fell with five metres to go and ended up coming in in sixth position.
Men’s 110 Hurdles:
Andre Storm ( NWU) 14.13s
Kobus Moolman (UP) 14.18s
Dylan Greyling (UJ) 15.06s
Tshepo Nyathi (TUT) 15.18s
Andre September (UWC) 15.21s
Gary Morris (US) 15.30s
Christo van Eeden ( NMMU) 20.92s
Emmanuel Papgis (UFS) 41.86s
Men’s 100 Metres (Hand time):
Simon Magakwe (NWU) 9.90s
Gideon Trotter (UFS) 10.10s
Akani Simbini (UP) 10.40s
Brent Stevens (UWC) 10.50s
Waide Jooste (UJ) 10.70s
Heinrich Fortuin (US) 10.90s
Riaan van Huyssteen (NMMU) 11.30s
Lebakeng Sesele (TUT) DIS
Men’s 400 Metres:
Wayde van Niekerk (UFS) 45.89
Jacques de Swardt (UP)46.27
Jaden Flagg (US) 48.09
Rodwell Ndlovu(UWC) 48.14
Thando Loliwe (NMMU) 49.61
Nijel Amos(NWU) 49.79
Thapelo Modishana (TUT) 51.22
Rhodwin van Vuuren(UJ) 52.11
