In the third of a series on the elite SA athletes striving to carry the flag at the 2024 Olympics, Team SA looks at teen sensation Laura van Niekerk.
Lara van Niekerk underlined her status as South Africa’s latest swimming star with double gold at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, and she is targeting similar success at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
The 19-year-old broke the Commonwealth Games record three times on her way to winning gold in the women’s 50m breaststroke. In the final, she swam 29.73sec to finish 0.44sec ahead of England’s Imogen Clark.
Three days later, Van Niekerk entered the women’s 100m breaststroke final as the favourite in lane four (with fellow South Africans Tatjana Schoenmaker in lane five and Kaylene Corbett in lane one).
“On the morning of the final, I just calmed myself because I knew I had done the work. I just had to go out and enjoy it and I enjoyed the race,” the Pretoria East swimmer later told Sport24.
The big question going into the final was could Van Niekerk convert her raw speed over 50m into a 100m performance that required more stamina.
She answered it in emphatic fashion, touching the wall at halfway in 30.26sec, 0.66 ahead of Schoenmaker, and coming home 0.55 quicker than the Olympic silver medallist.
Van Niekerk took gold in 1:05.47, a time that would have won her the World Championships event in Budapest earlier in the year, with Schoenmaker (1:06.68) settling for silver.
The two embraced in the pool and shed happy tears together on the podium as the South African flag was hoisted and the national anthem played.
“I’m still speechless. It doesn’t feel like I’m a double Commonwealth Games champion. I don’t think it’s ever going to sink in,” said Van Niekerk after the race.
Eugene da Ponte, who has coached Van Nierkerk since she was eight, said while it hadn’t sunk in for him either, he was “pretty proud and I suppose happy is a bit of an understatement. I’m still a little shellshocked.”
Da Ponte cited Van Niekerk’s preparation before the Games and the fact she had been surrounded by familiar competitors in Schoenmaker and Corbett as the biggest factors in her success.
South African breaststroke legend and three-time Olympic medallist Penny Heyns said she was “really excited” for Van Niekerk, who had to spread her matric studies over two years (the “hard subjects” were taken care of in 2021) so she could spend enough time in the pool.
“I think the best for her is yet to come,” Heyns added. “She has been improving all the time and the more she competes at this level, the better she is going to get.”
Van Niekerk is sure to be a better swimmer when she arrives in Paris for the next Olympics, which both she and Da Ponte are targeting for another gold rush.
Until then, Da Ponte says they will regard every medal as a “stepping stone to 2024”.