ATHLETICS
Gift steals the show in spite of transponder crash
Teen Gift Leotlela stuns the athletics world with win against Olympic champion Wayde Van Niekerk
The electronic timing system that failed in Wayde van Niekerk’s 100m race in Bloemfontein on Wednesday was less than a year old‚ athletics officials say. Van Niekerk‚ the Olympic and world 400m champion‚ was beaten into second place by 18-year-old Gift Leotlela in the main 100m race of the Athletics SA Speed Series meet. Organisers had to resort to hand times after the failure of the electronic apparatus. A Free State Athletics official said the new system was bought less than a year ago‚ after the 2016 provincial championships in which Van Niekerk ran 9.98sec in the 100m. That feat made him the first man in history to break the three sprint barriers — 10sec in the 100m‚ 20sec in the 200m and 44sec in the 400m. Athletics SA president Aleck Skhosana said the transponder had failed. "It is something you connect to the gun‚ so when you shoot‚ the gun must hit the transponder and in that particular race the transponder did not [fire]. "Why — because it’s a new system — we don’t know. We...
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