Wins for Caster and Simon
Magakwe provided the sensation of the weekend for South Africans when the 27-year-old burst through the 10 seconds barrier and rewrote the SA 100m sprint record set by Johan Rossouw when Magakwe was under two years of age.
Magakwe blasted free from Akani Simbine to have the stadium clock stop on 9.99 seconds - but on inspection the photo finish credited the North West athlete with a time of 9.98.
"I was aggressive. I wanted it so badly. I pushed so hard in the last 30 metres," said the sprinter.
"What is exciting is my coach (Eugene Thipe) is from South Africa and not from Jamaica. Everything we do, we do in South Africa," Magakwe added.
Second-placed Simbine also broke the old national record (10.06) in a time of 10.02 seconds, while Emile Erasmus finished third in 10.23 seconds.
Alongside Olympic 200m athlete, Anaso Jobodwana, the country now has two sprinters capable of featuring highly at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July.
Caster Semenya, the women's 800-metres silver medalist at the 2012 London Olympics, won the two-lap race in Pretoria in a time of 2:03.05.
This is considerably slower than her 1:55.45 personal best.
South African javelin queen, Sunette Viljoen, claimed her ninth national title in her specialist event with a distance of 64.77m. Six of her attempts on the day were over 60 metres, auguring well for the remainder of the season.
"I'm very happy with my overall performance today. I had six throws over 60 metres, which makes me very excited for the rest of the season,” said Viljoen. "It's now a good platform I can build on for the international season."
SA 400m hurdles record-holder, LJ van Zyl, lost to defending champion and training partner Cornel Fredericks.
Fredericks went past Van Zyl over the final stretch to claim the title in a time of 49.21 seconds.
Van Zyl took the silver medal in a time of 50 seconds, with Le Roux Hamman third in 50.29sec.
South African record-holder in both horizontal jumps, Khotso Mokoena, won the triple jump with a distance of 16.68m.
Wilson Kipsang clocked a new course record in London when he crossed the line in 2:04:29. This gives him an average of 2:04:15 for his best 5 performances, which is the fastest by any athlete in the world.
The Kenyan super-marathoner now owns the course records at London, Berlin and Frankfurt and has five sub-2:05 performances to his name.
Haile Gebrselassie the next best with three sub 2:05 races.
Kipsang will be flying into South Africa this week to be at the Old Mutual Two Oceans marathon.
This year sees a record field and a highly motivated number of athletes given the R1-million incentive for the first man and women to break the race records of 3:03:44 and 3:30:36 set by Thompson Magawana and Frith van der Merwe in 1988 and 1989 respectively.
Changes to the course have made this a tougher task as the climb from Edinburgh Drive to UCT adds about 2 minutes to the times and means that it will take a 2:09 marathoner to get the men's record.
The Russian twins, Elena and Olesya Nurgalieva, have the best chance of doing anything on the strategic and hilly course as they not only have 2:27 marathons to their credit, but also years of experience. However, their age now counts against them.
(File Photo:Gallo Images)
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