Back-wheel blues blow Candice Lill’s Olympic race

Paris — Candice Lill’s Olympic dream of racing near the front of the pack ended with a shattered back wheel in Paris on Sunday, but it didn’t stop her from getting back into the race in which she ended a distant 20th in the cross-country race.

“My strategy was to take the start as it comes and stay patient and try to get as far forward as I could,” said the mountain-biker who was 10th before the mishap on the second lap.

“I was in a good position to do so, maybe a few places further back than I would have wanted.

“And I was feeling good, moving up and then the wheel thing happened … I came down one of the roll-downs on the course and as I hit the bottom, my back wheel just blew to pieces.”

Lill ran to the tech zone to change the wheel. Her race was over, but she had no thought of quitting.

“I don’t want to regret something. You’re here for the Olympics, you have to give everything.

“And there is something special that happens when you’re fighting close in front, that you’re able to dig a bit deeper. You’re part of the racing so it’s a lot more exciting and motivating, whereas a lot of the time today I was just racing on my own. So it’s hard to stay feeling that you’re in a race, but I did push as hard as I could.”

Lill admitted her disaster made her even hungrier to achieve at the world championships in Andorra at end-August.

“I now have a bee in my bonnet. Now I’m angry. I didn’t get what I came for [in Paris].”

The 32-year-old said she was tempted to stick around at least for the next Games in Los Angeles in 2028.

“This year has been my best yet,” said Lill, who scored her first World Cup podiums in the past five weeks.

“But I’m feeling my best ever and I don’t want to be done with it until I’m done. And as long as I’m feeling good, enjoying it and making progress in my sport, I’m going to carry on.”

Tatjana Smith was fastest in the 100m breaststroke heats in the morning, clocking 1 min 05.00 sec, the second-fastest time of her career.

Her 1:04.82 is the Olympic record she set at Tokyo 2020.

In the same heat was Lithuania’s Ruta Meilutyte, who had beaten the South African at the 2023 world championships, finishing third in 1:06.04.

China’s world No 1, Qianting Tang, was the second-quickest in 1:05.63 with Ireland’s Mona McSharry touching 1:05.74.

American world record-holder Lilly King won her heat in 1:06.10.

Smith raced in the semifinals later on Sunday night.

Pieter Coetzé finished second in the fastest 100m backstroke heat in 52.90, behind Hungarian Hubert Kos in 52.78, to advance to the evening session.

And Aimee Canny also progressed out of the 200m freestyle heats, ending fifth in her heat in 1:57.81.

Rowers John Smith and Chris Baxter ended second in their men’s pair heat, nearly 3 sec behind Great Britain, easily advancing to the semifinals on Wednesday. They crossed the line in 6:36.71.

“The race went well,” said Smith, a member of the golden London 2012 crew who is competing at his fourth Games.

“We executed what we needed to do, but we’re going to work really hard in the next few days to try to improve a few things and look for a better race come the semifinals.”

Baxter said they were looking for a bit more speed.

Kayla de Waal put the SA women’s hockey team 1-0 up against Australia in the first quarter, but their opponents fought back to win 2-1.

“We’re disappointed not to have got a result,” said captain Erin Christie. “We fought hard for that one point.

“As a start of our Olympic campaign we wanted to make a mark on this game and we wanted to prove that we are here to compete and I think we did do that.

“For us it’s all about building and so the next game we’ll focus on the little areas that we need to focus on and we’ll keep going.”

The women’s sevens rugby team went down 5-34 to Australia in their opening encounter.

Fencer Harry Saner was eliminated in the first round of the men’s épée, going down 9-15 to Vadim Sharlaimov of Kazakhstan.