Six of the best for Toti AC juniors

THIS past weekend Amanzimtoti Athletics Club’s juniors made a major impression at the KZN Junior Athletics Championships.

New KZN champions crowned were Lee-anne Blake (800 and 1500m girls 15), Lisha Van Onselen (1500m girls 19), Roald Bothma (high jump boys 17), Rishen Archarey (400m boys 15) and Dwayne Trollip (400m boys 17).

Over and above these gold medal performances, silver medals were achieved by Sesimphiwe Mbatha, Roald Bothma and Lisha Van Onselen, while Roald Bothma, Dwayne Trollip and Dehan and Wickus Herbst achieved bronze medals. This brought the club’s total to six gold, three silver and four bronze medals.

Lee-anne achieved by far the best performance of any athlete at the championships with her remarkable 800m winning time of 2:11.85, despite still being under 14. Not only did she smash her own KZN record, but she is now the fastest high school girl so far this season over this distance in South Africa and one of the fastest in the world in her age group. The national Eagles Club Facebook athletics media page mentioned her as one of their national athlete of the week for this performance. Her 1,500m winning time was also the third best overall performance of the meeting.

Dwayne Trollip also achieved a remarkable performance with his winning time of 49.60 in the 400m, which was one of the top performances achieved by any boy at the championships.

The performances of the juniors, a number of whom had shown great improvement and achieved quite a few more fourth place positions, did Toti proud and has raised the profile of the Toti Athletics Club significantly in KZN track and field circles.

The Toti AC committee is hard at work as the club prepares to host the popular Dick King 21km run and 15km walk. The race gets its name from the epic ride of Dick King who covered more than 950km in 10 days as the frontier’s man raced from Port Natal to Grahamstown.

The Dick King half marathon takes place on 29 March. Entry for licensed runners is R90 and walkers R80, while temporary licences are available along with the collection of entries on 28 March at Amanzimtoti beachfront from 10am to 4pm and Sunday from 4.30am. Runners are reminded that this is strictly a pre-entry event and no entries will be taken on the day. T-shirts will be given to the first 1,000 pre-entries only. Enter online at www.totiac.co.za or for race enquiries, call Des on 082-808-0348 or Thobikile on 078-474-0342.

The Dick King route starts at Toti main beach, through Doonside, Warner Beach and Illovo. Runners return on the same route, finishing on Toti main beach

Club members are reminded to contact Martin to assist with the marshalling on race day. The club also needs help on race day to hand out colddrinks and water at the pre-hydration station, serving of tea and coffee and setting up the start and finish area. Club members are reminded that they may not participate in the race. The Dick King helpers run takes place on Saturday, 21 March at 5.45am at the Spur. Cold drinks and water will be supplied. Members must wear club vests.

A group of Toit runner completed Sunday’s Umgeni Water Marathon which had 15km, 31km and 42km distance runs. Well done to Lawrence Herron who was first in his age group.

42km results:

• 76th Mark McCalgan (40-49) 3.48.30,
• 98th Chris Stange (40-49) 3.55.37,
• 185th Mike Phillips (50-59) 4.26.36,
• 186th Pieter Terblanche (open) 4.26.52,
• 188th Ray Hair (40-49) 4.27.11.

32km results:

• 14th Lawrence Herron (50-59) 2.34.45,
• 134th Jolanda Broodryk (50-59) 3.13.55,
• 135th Cecil Clarke (60+) 3.14.00,
• 147th Thobekile Zama (open) 3.17.34,
• 226th Mandlakhe Mzimela (40-49) 3.34.34,
• 281st Mpho Nesamari (open) 3.53.05,
• 298th Antoinette Wasserman (40-49) 3.58.11,
• 315th Belinda Stange (40-49) 4.12.09.

15km walk/run:

• 75th Martyn Clark 1.24.00 (40-49),
• 525th Barbara Wagner (walker) 2.21.37,
• 526th Andrea Kretzmann (walker) 2.21.39.